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a Spanish opera singer, and is one of the most famous opera singers. He also was a part of 'The Three Tenors' and began his career at the tender age of 11. He has played over 60 roles in his amazing career as an opera singer around the world, and is very well known within all opera circles. |
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an Italian tenor who made his name by performing in the best opera houses in Europe and North America. He made his debut at the age of 22 and never looked back since then. He was the most famous and popular opera singer of his era and received many awards and acclamations for his talents. |
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a Greek singer, and is easily, one of the most famous female opera singers of all time. Her voice was extremely versatile and magically melodious, and she enraptured audiences from all corners of the world throughout her illustrious career. She has been rightly named 'La Divina'. |
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an American singer, and is widely considered to be one of the greatest and best sopranos of the last 100 years. The richness and depth of her magnetic voice has led many people to compare her voice with wine and chocolate. |
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a Spanish singer who is very well known for her interpretations of many previous opera works. She made her professional debut in 1956 and never looked back since then. She has played over 80 different roles in her career and her voice is known for its power and control. |
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Samson and Delilah by the Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens.
The niche behind Delilah contains a statue of Venus, the Goddess of love and her son, Cupid. This can be taken to represent the cause of Samson's fate.
The old woman standing behind her, providing further light for the scene, does not appear in the biblical narrative of Samson and Delilah. She is believed to be a procuress, and the adjacent profiles of her and Delilah may symbolise the old woman's past, and Delilah's future.
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a Flemish painter and one of the leading artists of the Northern Renaissance, mastering the art of oil painting, which was a new invention. He is considered one of the most talented painters of 15th century Europe and is best known for his highly realistic figure painting, usually on religious subjects, and portrait art. His hallmark three-quarter pose of face together with his mastery of oils brought a startling new realism to portraiture, and made him one of the foremost painters of the Northern Renaissance, much in demand by the newly emerging bourgeoisie and merchant class. His most notable works include the Altarpiece at Ghent Cathderal (1432), the Arnolfini Portrait (1434) and the Annunciation (1434). |
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The Arnolfini Portrait, an oil painting on oak panel dated 1434 by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck.
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.
The painting is often referenced for its immaculate depiction of non-Euclidean geometry, due to the image drawn on the round convex mirror hanging on the wall in the back of the room. |
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Auguste Rodin
(1840-1917) |
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a central figure in the history and development of French sculpture. Rodin repopularized sculpture and placed it on a par with painting.
A master sculptor in all media, including bronze, stone, plaster and even wood, Rodin is noted for several outstanding masterpieces, including: The Age of Bronze (1877), The Walking Man (1877), St John the Baptist Preaching (1878), The Thinker (1881), The Burghers of Calais (1885-95), The Kiss (1888-9), Monument to Balzac (1898), and The Gates of Hell (1880-1917) - his response to Dante's Inferno and Michelangelo's Last Judgement - which he worked on for much of his life.
Rodin inherited the contradictions that were implicit in the situation of nineteenth-century sculptors: he was the last major artist to try to create a style out of the synthesis of other styles.
As a realist he wanted an art that would be immediately comprehensible to everybody, but as an admirer of Baudelaire he wished to create a form that would express man's intangible desires. |
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| The Kiss, an 1889 marble sculpture by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. The embracing couple depicted in the sculpture appeared originally as part of a group of reliefs decorating Rodin's monumental bronze portal The Gates of Hell. |
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| Les Bourgeois de Calais ou The Burghers of Calais, one of the most famous sculptures by Auguste Rodin, completed in 1889. It serves as a monument to an occurrence in 1347 during the Hundred Years' War, when Calais, an important French port on the English Channel, was under siege by the English for over a year. |
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| The Gates of Hell ou La Porte de l'Enfer, a monumental sculptural group work by French artist Auguste Rodin that depicts a scene from "The Inferno", the first section of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. It includes many outstanding figures, including The Thinker, The Kiss, Ugolino and His Children, The Three Shades, and Adam and Eve. |
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| Impression, Sunrise ou Impression, soleil levant, a painting by Claude Monet. It gave rise to the name of the Impressionist movement. |
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| Poppies, Near Argenteuil, an impressionist painting by Claude Monet. The Impressionists painted not a landscape but the impression of a landscape. Nothing here is painted exactly; rather, everything is suggested. |
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| Waterlily Pond, an impressionist painting by Claude Monet. The simple design of this painting with the close-up view of the bridge was repeated in several other canvases. The fresh greens of the foliage evoke an early summer's day. |
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Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi
(circa 1386 – December 13, 1466)
also known as Donatello |
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the greatest European sculptor of the 15th century and arguably the best artist of his era and part of the remarkable group of artists who drove the early Renaissance in Florence. A prolific worker, he was a master of stone, wood, terracotta and stucco as well as his preferred medium of bronze. He had a huge influence on his contemporaries, due to his invention of rilevo schiacciato, his sensitive handling of classical motifs and the emotional content of his sculptures. |
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Donatello crafted two statues of David. The marble David is Donatello's earliest known important commission, and it is a work closely tied to tradition, giving few signs of the innovative approach to representation that the artist would develop as he matured.
Donatello's bronze David (circa 1440s) is famous as the first unsupported standing work of bronze cast during the Renaissance, and the first freestanding nude male sculpture made since antiquity. |
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| The Gattamelata, the first example of such an equestrian statue monument since ancient times, sculpted by Donatello. This work became the prototype for other equestrian monuments executed in Italy and Europe in the following centuries. |
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The Burning of the House of Lords
and Commons, a painting by Turner, depicting his preoccupation with the effects of moonlight and firelight. Here Turner uses thickly applied masses of yellow and red which is a direct consequence of his experiments with colour and monochrome in the 1920’s. |
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The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, 1838, an oil painting executed in 1839 by the English artist J. M. W. Turner (c.1775–1851).
It depicts one of the last second-rate ships of the line which played a distinguished role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the 98-gun ship HMS Temeraire, being towed towards its final berth in east London in 1838 to be broken up for scrap. |
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| Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway, an oil painting by the 19th century British painter J. M. W. Turner. |
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| The Last Supper, a 15th century mural painting in Milan created by Leonardo da Vinci for his patron Duke Ludovico Sforza and his duchess Beatrice d'Este. It represents the scene of The Last Supper from the final days of Jesus when Jesus announces that one of his Twelve Apostles would betray him. |
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Mona Lisa, a 16th-century portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel by Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci during the Renaissance in Florence, Italy.
The painting is a half-length portrait and depicts a seated woman whose facial expression is frequently described as enigmatic. The ambiguity of the subject's expression, the monumentality of the composition, and the subtle modeling of forms and atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the continuing fascination and study of the work. The image is so widely recognized, caricatured, and sought out by visitors to the Louvre that it is considered the most famous painting in the world. |
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Pablo Picasso
(1881-1973) |
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the greatest of all 20th century painters and one of the greatest artists in the entire history of art. Influenced by French Impressionism, as well as several expressionist painters, he nevertheless rejected Matisse's view of the primary importance and role of colour, and focused instead on new pictorial ways of representing form and space. This led him, in association with Georges Braque, to evolve an entirely new Cubist movement, which rapidly became the cutting edge of modern art.
Picasso's works reveal a number of differing styles, especially expressionism - and spanned a number of periods. Supreme masterpieces of his painting include Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Guernica, and Weeping Woman. |
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| Garçon à la Pipe, a painting by Pablo Picasso. The oil on canvas painting depicts a Parisian boy holding a pipe in his left hand and wearing a garland or wreath of flowers. |
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Guernica, a painting by Pablo Picasso, in response to the bombing of Guernica, Basque Country, by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces, on 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War.
Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace. |
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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
(July 15, 1606 – October 4, 1669) |
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arguably the greatest painter since the Renaissance. He created a large number of stunning masterpieces, including some of the finest examples of history-painting, group and individual portraiture, genre-paintings, still-life and self-portraits ever produced in the history of art. One of the greatest exponents of chiaroscuro (use of light and shadow), he is also famous for the character and emotional content of his canvases, which introduced a revolutionery realism into painting. Rembrandt was also one of the greatest draughtsmen and printmakers (etching and dry-point). |
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| Night Watch or The Night Watch or The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq, some of the common names of one of the most famous works by Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn. |
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| Artemisia Receiving Mausolus' Ashes or Sophonisba Receiving the Poisoned Cup, a painting by the Dutch master Rembrandt. The subject of the picture is still unclear. It portrays a young woman, variously identified as Sophonisba or Artemisia, or a generic queen due to her jewels and rich garments, receiving a cup from a maiden. The cup would contain the ashes of Artemisia's husband, King Mausolus, or, in the case of Sophonisba, the poison which killed her. |
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| The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, a 1661–62 oil painting by the Dutch painter Rembrandt. It is the last secular history painting he finished. |
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| The Creation of Adam, a section of Michelangelo's fresco Sistine Chapel ceiling painted circa 1511. It illustrates the Biblical story from the Book of Genesis in which God the Father breathes life into Adam, the first man. |
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| David, a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501 and 1504, by the Italian artist Michelangelo. |
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| The statue of Laocoön and His Sons, a monumental sculpture in marble. The statue is attributed by the Roman author Pliny the Elder to three sculptors from the island of Rhodes: Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus. It shows the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being strangled by sea serpents. |
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| The Marriage of the Virgin, an oil painting by Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael. The painting depicts a marriage ceremony between Mary and Joseph. |
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| The Madonna with the Christ Child and Saint John the Baptist, a 1506 painting by Raphael. The three figures in a calm green meadow are linked by looks and touching hands. The Virgin Mary is shown in a contrapposto pose, wearing a gold-bordered blue mantle set against a red dress and with her right leg lying along a diagonal. The blue symbolises the church and the red Christ's death, with the Madonna the uniting of Mother Church with Christ's sacrifice. With her eyes fixed on Christ, her head is turned to the left and slightly inclined, and in her hands she holds up Christ, as he leans forward unsteadily to touch the miniature cross held by John. The poppy refers to Christ's passion, death and resurrection. |
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| The Deposition or The Entombment, an oil painting by the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael. Like many works, it shares elements of the common subjects of the Deposition of Christ, the Lamentation of Christ, and the Entombment of Christ. |
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| The Transfiguration, the last painting by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael. |
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| The Portrait of Pope Leo X with two Cardinals, a painting by the Italian High Renaissance master Raphael. In contrast to other works depicting graceful Madonnas and figures from classical antiquity, this portrait by Raphael shows the subjects with realism rather than idealism. The Pope is depicted with ample features and apparent near-sightedness. The uneasy tone reflects a period of unrest and turmoil for the papacy; Martin Luther had challenged papal authority, listing among other grievances, Leo X's method of selling indulgences to fund work on St Peter's. |
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| The Portrait of Pope Innocent X, an oil on canvas portrait by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. Many artists and art critics consider it the finest portrait ever created. |
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| Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer |
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a Dutch painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. He is acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.
Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He worked slowly and with great care, using bright colours and sometimes expensive pigments, with a preference for cornflower blue and yellow. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work. |
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| The painting Girl with a Pearl Earring (Dutch: Het Meisje met de Parel), one of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer's masterworks and as the name implies, uses a pearl earring for a focal point. It is sometimes referred to as "the Mona Lisa of the North" or "the Dutch Mona Lisa". |
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| Basket of Fruit (c.1599), a painting by the Italian Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. |
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| The Calling of Saint Matthew, a masterpiece by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, depicting the Calling of Matthew. |
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| The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, a work by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, painted for the Cerasi Chapel of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. The painting depicts the martyrdom of St. Peter by crucifixion—Peter asked that his cross be inverted so as not to imitate his mentor, Christ, hence he is depicted upside-down. The large canvas shows Romans, their faces shielded, struggling to erect the cross of the elderly but muscular St. Peter. |
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| The Supper at Emmaus is a painting by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, executed in 1601. The painting depicts the moment when the resurrected but incognito Jesus, reveals himself to two of his disciples, only to soon vanish from their sight. The painting is unusual for the life-sized figures, the dark and blank background. |
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tenebrism
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chiaroscuro
a style of painting characterized by deep shadows and a distinct contrast between light and dark areas. In essence, it is a compositional technique in which some areas of the painting are kept completely black, allowing one or more areas to be strongly illuminated - usually from a single source of light.
Tenebrism is used exclusively for dramatic effect - it is also known as "dramatic illumination". It allows the painter to spotlight a face, a figure or group of figures, while the contrasting dark areas of the painting are sometimes left totally black. In contradistinction, chiaroscuro involves the use of smaller amounts of shadow to increase the three-dimensionality of a subject. |
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| Samson Slaying a Philistine, the earliest of the great marble groups by Giambologna (1529-1608). The sculpture shows Samson wielding the jawbone of an ass in order to slay one of the Philistines who have taunted him. It is a good example of the multiple viewpoints seen in Giambologna's work; the spiralling movement of the bodies means that there is no main view. |
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| La maja vestida, a painting by Spanish painter Francisco de Goya between 1798 and 1805. It is a clothed version of La maja desnuda. |
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The Third of May 1808, a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808.
The painting's content, presentation, and emotional force secure its status as a groundbreaking, archetypal image of the horrors of war. Although it draws on many sources from both high and popular art, The Third of May 1808 marks a clear break from convention. Diverging from the traditions of Christian art and traditional depictions of war, it has no distinct precedent, and is acknowledged as one of the first paintings of the modern era. |
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a ballet, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, composed 1875–1876. The scenario tells the story of Odette, a princess, who is turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. |
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