Hand with Reflecting Sphere

Hand with Reflecting Sphere
M. C. Escher, 1935
Lithograph, 31.8 × 21.3 cm

Hand with Reflecting Sphere also known as Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror is a lithograph print by Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in January 1935. The piece depicts a hand holding a reflective sphere. In the reflection, the hand holding the sphere is revealed to be Escher’s.

Self portraits in reflective, spherical surfaces are common in Escher’s work, and this image is the most prominent and famous example. In much of his self portraiture of this type, Escher is in the act of drawing the sphere, whereas in this image he is seated and gazing into the sphere. On the walls there are several framed pictures, one of which appears to be of an Indonesian shadow puppet.

Vitruvian Man

Vitruvian Man
Leonardo da Vinci, 1492
Pen and ink with wash over metalpoint on paper
344 × 245 mm

The Vitruvian Man is a world-renowned drawing with accompanying notes created by Leonardo da Vinci around the year 1492 as recorded in one of his journals. It depicts a nude male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and simultaneously inscribed in a circle and square. The drawing and text are sometimes called the Canon of Proportions or, less often, Proportions of Man. It is stored in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, Italy, but is only displayed on special occasions.

John William Waterhouse's Painting

Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May (1908)

Jason and Medea (1907)

Echo and Narcissus (1903)

Boreas (1903)

Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses (1891)

The Magic Circle (1886)

Hylas and the Nymphs (1896)

Odysseus and the Sirens

The Lady of Shalott, 1888 (Tate Gallery, London)

Ophelia (1889)

Bacchus

Bacchus
Caravaggio, c.1595
oil on canvas
95 × 85 cm
Uffizi, Florence

Bacchus (c.1595) is a painting by Italian Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610). It is held in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

The painting shows a youthful Bacchus reclining in classical fashion with grapes and vine leaves in his hair, fingering the drawstring of his loosely-draped robe. On a stone table in front of him is a bowl of fruit and a large carafe of red wine; with his left hand he holds out to the viewer a shallow goblet of the same wine, apparently inviting the viewer to join him.

Bacchus was painted shortly after Caravaggio joined the household of his first important patron, Cardinal Del Monte, and reflects the humanist interests of the Cardinal's educated circle.

Waterfall

Waterfall
M. C. Escher, 1961
lithograph, 38 × 30 cm

Waterfall is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M.C. Escher which was first printed in October, 1961. It shows an apparent paradox where water from the base of a waterfall appears to run downhill before reaching the top of the waterfall.

While most two-dimensional artists use relative proportions to create an illusion of depth, Escher here and elsewhere uses conflicting proportions to create the visual paradox. Waterfall has the structure of a Penrose triangle, an impossible object designed independently by Roger Penrose and Oscar Reutersvärd.

Adam and Eve

Genesis is the first book of the Bible, and the first of five books of the pentateuch. It recounts the Judeo-Christian history of the world from the creation to the descent of the children of Israel into Egypt, and contains some of the best-known stories of the Old Testament, including Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, and the biblical Patriarchs.

For Jews the theological importance of Genesis centers on the Covenants linking God to his Chosen People and the people to the Promised Land. Christianity has reinterpreted Genesis as the prefiguration of Christian beliefs, notably the Christian view of Christ as the new Adam and the New Testament as the culmination of the covenants.

Structurally, Genesis consists of a "primeval history" (Genesis 1-11) and cycles of Patriarchal stories. The narrative of Joseph stands apart from these. Scholars see the book as the product of anonymous authors and editors working between the 10th and 5th centuries BC.

Sistine Chapel ceiling painting

The Downfall of Adam and Eve and their Expulsion from the Garden of Eden

The Creation of Adam

The Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, is one of the most renowned artworks of the High Renaissance. The ceiling is that of the large Sistine Chapel built within the Vatican by Pope Sixtus IV, begun in 1477 and finished by 1480.

Its various painted elements comprise part of a larger scheme of decoration within the Sistine Chapel which includes the large fresco of The Last Judgment on the sanctuary wall, also by Michelangelo, wall paintings by several other artists and a set of large tapestries by Raphael, the whole illustrating much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

Central to the ceiling decoration are nine scenes from the Book of Genesis of which the Creation of Adam is the best known, having an iconic standing equalled only by Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the hands of God and Adam being reproduced in countless imitations.

Relativity

Relativity
M. C. Escher, 1953
lithograph, 27.7 × 29.2 cm

Relativity is a famous lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher which was first printed in December, 1953.

It depicts a paradoxical world in which the normal laws of gravity do not apply. The architectural structure seems to be the centre of an idyllic community, with most of its inhabitants casually going about their ordinary business, like dining. There are windows and doorways leading to park-like outdoor settings. Yet all the figures are dressed in identical attire and have featureless bulb-shaped heads. Identical characters such as these can be found in many other Escher works.

In the world of Relativity, there are actually three sources of gravity, each being orthogonal to the two others. Each inhabitant lives in one of the gravity wells, where normal physical laws apply. There are sixteen characters, spread between each gravity source. The apparent confusion of the lithograph print comes from the fact that the three gravity sources are depicted in the same space.

The structure has three stairways, and each stairway can be used by people who belong to two different gravity sources. This creates interesting phenomena, such as in the top stairway, where two inhabitants use the same stairway in the same direction and on the same side, but each using a different face of each step; thus, one descends the stairway as the other climbs it, even while moving in the same direction nearly side-by-side. In the other stairways, inhabitants are depicted as climbing the stairways upside-down, but based on their own gravity source, they are climbing normally.

Drawing Hands

Drawing Hands
M. C. Escher, 1948
lithograph, 28.2 × 33.2 cm

Drawing Hands is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher which was first printed in January 1948. It shows a sheet of paper out of which rise, from the wrists which remain flat on the page, two hands, facing opposite and apparently in the act of drawing one another into existence, a paradox. The image is a kind of strange loop. Although Escher used paradoxes in his works often, this is one of the most obvious: For how can one hand be drawing another while the other is drawing it?

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp
Rembrandt, 1632
Oil on canvas
216 × 170 cm
Mauritshuis, The Hague

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp is a 1632 oil painting by Rembrandt housed in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Dr. Nicolaes Tulp is pictured explaining the musculature of the arm to medical professionals. The corpse is that of the criminal Aris Kindt, strangled earlier that day for armed robbery. Some of the spectators are various patrons who paid commissions to be included in the painting.

The event can be dated to 16 January 1632: the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons, of which Tulp was official City Anatomist, permitted only one public dissection a year, and the body would have to be that of an executed criminal.

Anatomy lessons were a social event in the 17th century, taking place in lecture rooms that were actual theatres, with students, colleagues and the general public being permitted to attend on payment of an entrance fee. The spectators are appropriately dressed for a solemn social occasion. It is thought that, with the exception of the figures to the rear and left, these people were added to the picture later.

One person is missing: the Preparator, whose task it was to prepare the body for the lesson. In the 17th century an important scientist such as Dr. Tulp would not be involved in menial and bloody work like dissection and such tasks would be left to others. It is for this reason that the picture shows no cutting instruments. Instead we see in the lower right corner an enormous open textbook on anatomy, possibly the 1543 De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Fabric of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius.

Medical specialists have commented on the accuracy of muscles and tendons painted by the 26-year-old Rembrandt. It is not known where he obtained such knowledge; it is possible that he copied the details from an anatomical textbook. However, recent Dutch research revealed several discrepancies of the exposed left forearm compared to that of a real male cadaver.[1]

The face of the corpse is partially shaded, a suggestion of umbra mortis (shadow of death), a technique that Rembrandt was to use frequently.

The painting is signed in the top-right hand corner Rembrandt f[ecit] 1632. It is the first known instance of Rembrandt signing a painting with his forename as opposed to the initials RHL (Rembrandt Harmenszoon of Leiden), and is thus a sign of his growing artistic confidence

American Gothic

American Gothic
Grant Wood, 1930
Oil on beaverboard
74.3 × 62.4 cm, 29¼ × 24½ in
Art Institute of Chicago

American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood from 1930. Portraying a pitchfork-holding farmer and a younger woman (imagined to be his wife or daughter) in front of a house of Carpenter Gothic style, it is one of the most familiar images in 20th century American art.

Wood wanted to depict the traditional roles of men and women as the man is holding a pitchfork symbolizing hand labor. Wood referenced late 19th century photography and posed his sitters in a manner reminiscent of early American portraiture.

Raja Ravi Varma's Art Painting

The Birth of Venus

The Birth of Venus

Sandro Botticelli, c. 1482–1486
tempera on canvas
172.5 × 278.5 cm, 67.9 × 109.6 in
Uffizi, Florence

The Birth of Venus is a painting by Sandro Botticelli. It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a full grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore (Venus Anadyomene motif). The painting is currently in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Ophelia

Ophelia
John Everett Millais, 1851–1852
Oil on canvas
168 × 112 cm
Tate Britain, London

Ophelia is a painting by British artist Sir John Everett Millais, completed in 1852. Currently held in the Tate Britain in London, it depicts Ophelia, a character from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, singing before she drowns in a river in Denmark. Although it was not universally acclaimed when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy, the painting has since come to be admired for its beauty and its accurate depiction of a natural landscape. Ophelia has been estimated by experts to be worth at least £30 million.

The Arnolfini Portrait

The Arnolfini Portrait
Jan van Eyck, 1434
Oil on oak panel of 3 vertical boards
82.2 (panel 84.5) × 60 (panel 62.5) cm, 32.4 × 23.6 in
National Gallery, London

The Arnolfini Portrait is a painting in oils on oak panel executed by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck in 1434. Among other titles, it is also known as "The Arnolfini Wedding", "The Arnolfini Marriage", "The Arnolfini Double Portrait" or the "Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife".

This painting is believed to be a portrait of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife in a room, presumably in their home in the Flemish city of Bruges. It is considered one of the most original and complex paintings in Western art history. Being both signed and dated by Van Eyck in 1434, it is, with the Ghent Altarpiece by the same artist and his brother Hubert, the oldest very famous panel painting to have been executed in oils rather than in tempera. The painting was bought by the National Gallery in London in 1842.

The illusionism of the painting was remarkable for its time, in part for the rendering of detail, but particularly for the use of light to evoke space in an interior, for "its utterly convincing depiction of a room, as well of the people who inhabit it"

The Lady of Shalott

John William Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott, 1888 (Tate Gallery, London)

"The Lady of Shalott" is a Victorian poem by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892). Like other early poems— "Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere," and "Galahad"— the poem recasts Arthurian subject matter loosely based on medieval sources and takes up some themes that would become more fully realized in Idylls of the King where the tale of Elaine is recounted.

The Night Watch

De Nachtwacht (The Night Watch)
Rembrandt, 1642
Oil on canvas
363 × 437 cm, 142.9 × 172.0 in
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Night Watch or The Night Watch (Dutch: De Nachtwacht) is the common name of one of the most famous works by Dutch painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.

The painting may be more properly titled The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch. It is on prominent display in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and is its most famous painting.

Rokeby Venus

The Rokeby Venus
Diego Velázquez, 1647–1651
Oil on canvas
122 × 177 cm
National Gallery, London

The Rokeby Venus (also known as Venus at her Mirror, Venus and Cupid, or ' La Venus del espejo') is a painting by Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age, in the National Gallery, London. Completed between 1647 and 1651 and probably painted during the artist's visit to Italy, the work depicts the goddess Venus in a sensually erotic pose, lying on a bed looking into a mirror held by the god of love and sex, Cupid.

The Rokeby Venus is the only surviving female nude by Velázquez, and one of only two such paintings in 17th-century Spanish art, which was often censored by the Spanish Inquisition. It was innovative in showing an athletic female nude form; nude works had conventionally depicted rounder, full-bodied women, and it is this break that makes the painting provocative. The composition has only three main colours: red, white and grey, which include the pigment of Venus's skin. In The Rokeby Venus Velázquez combines two traditional methods of portraying Venus; recumbent on a bed (as in Titian's Venus and Cupid with an Organist), and gazing into a mirror. While numerous works, from the ancient to the baroque, have been cited as sources of inspiration for Velázquez, in many ways the painting represents a departure.

The School of Athens

The School of Athens

Raphael, 1509–1510
Fresco, 500 × 770 cm
Vatican City, Apostolic Palace

The School of Athens or "Scuola di Atene" in Italian is one of the most famous paintings by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1510 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate with frescoes the rooms that are now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. The Stanza della Segnatura was the first of the rooms to be decorated, and The School of Athens the second painting to be finished, after La disputa. The picture has long been seen as "Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the High Renaissance."[1

Lady Godiva

Lady Godiva by John Collier, ca 1897

Godiva (or Godgifu) (fl. 1040-1080) was an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who, according to legend, rode naked through the streets of Coventry in England in order to gain a remission of the oppressive toll imposed by her husband on his tenants. The name "peeping Tom" for a voyeur comes from later versions of this legend in which a man named Tom watched her ride and was struck blind.

Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa
(Italian: La Gioconda, French:La Joconde)
Leonardo da Vinci, circa 1503–1506
Oil on poplar
77 × 53 cm, 30 × 21 in
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda (La Joconde) is a 16th-century portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel by Leonardo Da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance. It is arguably the most famous painting in the world, and few other works of art have been subject to as much scrutiny, study, mythologizing and parody.[1] It is owned by the French government and hangs in the Musée du Louvre in Paris, France with the title Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo.

The painting, a half-length portrait, depicts a woman whose gaze meets the viewer's with an expression often described as enigmatic. The ambiguity of the sitter's expression, the monumentality of the half-figure composition, and the subtle modeling of forms and atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the painting's continuing fascination.

Last Supper

Jacopo Bassano's the Last Supper.

Simon Ushakov's icon of the Mystical Supper.

The Last Supper in Milan (1498), by Leonardo da Vinci.

The Last Supper (1594) by Tintoretto.

The Last Supper (also called Lord's Supper or Mystical Supper) was the last meal Jesus shared with his Twelve Apostles and disciples before his death. The Last Supper has been the subject of many paintings, perhaps the most famous by Leonardo da Vinci.

In the course of the Last Supper, and with specific reference to taking the bread and the wine, Jesus told his disciples, "Do this in remembrance of me", (1 Corinthians Corinthians). (The vessel which was used to serve the wine is sometimes called the Holy Chalice.) Many Christians describe this as the "Institution of the Eucharist" (see Maundy Thursday).