5 Masterpieces at the Uffizi Gallery

The Uffizi Gallery entirely occupies the first and second floors of the large building constructed between 1560-1580 and designed by Giorgio Vasari.

It is famous worldwide for its outstanding collections of ancient sculptures and paintings (from the Middle Ages to the Modern period).

The collections of paintings from the 14th-century and Renaissance period include some absolute masterpieces: Giotto, Simone Martini, Piero della Francesca, Beato Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Mantegna, Correggio, Leonardo, Raffaello, Michelangelo and Caravaggio, in addition to many precious works by European painters (mainly German, Dutch and Flemish).

Moreover, the Gallery boasts an invaluable collection of ancient statues and busts from the Medici family, which adorns the corridors and consists of ancient Roman copies of lost Greek sculptures.

Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) | Tribuna of the Uffizi, 1772-1777 | Royal Collection (UK)

5 Masterpieces of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents over 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy.

The Museum lives in two iconic sites in New York City - The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters.

Millions of people also take part in The Met experience online.

Since its founding in 1870, The Met has always aspired to be more than a treasury of rare and beautiful objects.

Every day, art comes alive in the Museum's galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.

Guido Reni | The Immaculate Conception, 1627

Guido Reni (Bologna, 1575-1642), during his lifetime the most celebrated living painter in Italy, was famous for the elegance of his compositions and the beauty and grace of his heads, earning him the epithet "Divine".

This altarpiece, with its otherworldly space shaped by clouds and putti in a high-keyed palette, was commissioned in about 1627 by the Spanish ambassador in Rome for the infanta of Spain.

It later hung in the cathedral of Seville, where it deeply influenced Spanish painters, especially Bartolomé Estebán Murillo, whose workshop produced many iterations of this subject.

The Immaculate Conception became a symbol of the universality of the Catholic Church and was used for the conversion of populations across Spain’s global empire. | Source: © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Guido Reni (Italian, 1575-1642) | The Immaculate Conception, 1627 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rembrandt | The Night Watch, 1642

Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, also known as The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch, but commonly referred to as The Night Watch (Dutch: De Nachtwacht), is a 1642 painting by Rembrandt van Rijn.

It is in the collection of the Amsterdam Museum but is prominently displayed in the Rijksmuseum as the best-known painting in its collection.

The Night Wahtc is one of the most famous Dutch Golden Age paintings.

Rembrandt's large painting (363x437 cm (12 by 14+1⁄2 feet)) is famed for transforming a group portrait of a civic guard company into a compelling drama energized by light and shadow (tenebrism).

The title is a misnomer; the painting does not depict a nocturnal scene.

Sir Anthony Van Dyck | Baroque painter

Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) was the most important Flemish painter of the 17th century after Rubens, whose works influenced the young Van Dyck.

He also studied and was profoundly influenced by the work of Italian artists, above all, Titian.

Anthony van Dyck studied under Peter Paul Rubens and was one of his most accomplished students.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard | Rococo painter

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), French Rococo painter whose most familiar works, such as The Swing (1767), are characterized by delicate hedonism.

Fragonard was the son of a haberdasher’s assistant. The family moved to Paris about 1738, and in 1747 the boy was apprenticed to a lawyer, who, noticing his appetite for drawing, suggested that he be taught painting.

François Boucher | Rococo painter

François Boucher (1703-1770) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style.

Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories, and pastoral scenes.

He was perhaps the most celebrated painter and decorative artist of the 18th century.

Ginevra Cantofoli | Baroque painter

Ginevra Cantofoli (1618-1672) was an Italian painter.

She was active in Bologna in the Baroque period.

Cantofoli was born in Bologna, Italy in 1618.

She trained under Giovanni Andrea Sirani, the father of Elisabetta Sirani, in Bologna.

Van Gogh, Rembrandt and the Rijksmuseum

Vincent van Gogh travelled to Amsterdam in 1885 to visit the Rijksmuseum, which had recently opened.

On the day of his visit he painted his "View of Amsterdam from Central Station".

The paint still wet, he took the new work with him to the Rijksmuseum.

Vincent van Gogh | Wheat field, 1888 | Rijksmuseum

Sebastiano Ricci | Baroque painter

Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734) was born in Belluno. At the age of fourteen, Sebastiano Ricci left his birthplace for Venice, where he soon entered the studio of Federico Cervelli (1625 - before 1700), a Milanese painter active there since the mid-1650s.

While contemporary biographers sometimes discounted Sebastiano's debt to Cervelli, modern scholars generally agree that the Milanese master gave him solid practical instruction and introduced him to the Venetian painters of the seventeenth century.

Lucio Massari | Madonna of the Laundry, 1620

"Mary washed, Joseph laid... "

The subject of this painting really seems to illustrate the famous lullaby your grandparents or parents used to sing to you when you were a child.

You know, no one can escape household affairs, not even Joseph, Mary and Jesus!

The scene depicted by the Bolognese painter Lucio Massari (1568-1633) is in fact very unusual: every member of the Sacraiglia works with commitment and organization to clean and iron the laundry.

Lucio Massari Holy Family (Madonna of the Laundry), 1620 | Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze

Marco Ricci | Baroque painter

Marco Ricci (1676-1730) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period.

Early years

He was born at Belluno and received his first instruction in art from his uncle, Sebastiano Ricci, likely in Milan in 1694-6.

He left for Venice with his uncle in 1696, but had to flee the city.

He visited Rome, where he was for some time occupied in painting perspective views.

Hans Laagland, 1965 | Neo Baroque style

Hans Laagland was born in Koersel (Belgium) to Ludo Laagland, a professional painter.

His father trained Hans throughout his childhood.

At the age of ten, Hans completed his first oil painting and two years later held his first solo exhibition.

As he continued to develop his skills, he became enthralled with the works and techniques of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), and at fifteen he set out to study those masterful techniques.

Rosalba Carriera | Rococo painter

Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757), a Venetian Rococo painter, was best known for her innovative approach to pastels, which had previously been used for informal drawings and preparatory sketches.

She was also credited with pastel as a medium for serious portraiture that redefined the Rococo manner.

In her younger years, she specialized in portrait miniatures.

Carriera would later become known for her pastel portraits, helping popularize the medium in eighteenth-century Europe.

Federico Barocci | Baroque / Mannerist painter

Federico Barocci (also written Barozzi) (1535 in Urbino - 1612 in Urbino) was an Italian Renaissance painter and printmaker.

His original name was Federico Fiori, and he was nicknamed Il Baroccio.

His work was highly esteemed and influential, and foreshadows the Baroque of Rubens.

He is generally considered the greatest and the most individual painter of his time in central Italy.

Giovanna Fratellini | Baroque painter

Giovanna Fratellini (1666-1731) was a Florentine artist during the Baroque period.

Born in Florence as Giovanna Marrmocchini Cortesi, she married Guiliano Fratellini in 1685 and changed her name to Fratellini.

This well-born woman pastellist was a lady-in-waiting to Vittoria della Rovere, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany.

The Ladies of the Baroque | Part 3

Elisabetta Sirani

Italian painter, 1638-1665

Elisabetta Sirani was an Italian Baroque painter and printmaker who died in still unexplained circumstances at the early age of 27.

She was the most famous woman artist in early modern Bologna and established an academy for other women artists.

Sirani produced over 200 paintings, 15 etchings, and hundreds of drawings, making her an extremely prolific artist, especially considering her early death.

Domenico Fetti | Baroque painter

Biography from: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Domenico Fetti (1589-1623) was born in 1589, almost certainly in Rome, and is known to have been educated at the Collegio Romano.

He probably received his initial artistic training from his father, Pietro Fetti, a painter, perhaps from Ferrara, about whom very little is known.

Contemporary sources refer to Domenico Fetti as a student of Ludovico Cardi, called Il Cigoli (1559-1613).

Domenico could have entered Cigoli's shop as early as 1604, the year in which the Florentine painter came to Rome.

The Ladies of the Baroque | Part 2

Ginevra Cantofoli

Italian painter, 1618-1672

Ginevra Cantofoli trained under Giovanni Andrea Sirani, the father of Elisabetta Sirani, in Bologna.

Although a generation older than Elisabetta Sirani, Cantofoli was described by Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Cesare Masini and Marcello Oretti as Elisabetta's student.

Ginevra Cantofoli | Woman in a Turban, 1650 | Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini, Roma.

Orsola Caccia (1596-1676) | Mannerist painter

Orsola Maddalena Caccia, born Theodora Caccia (1596-1676) was an Italian Mannerist painter and Catholic nun.

She painted religious images, altarpieces, and still lifes.

The daughter of painter Guglielmo Caccia and Laura Olivia, she was baptized Theodora Orsola on December 4, 1596.

In 1620, she entered the Ursulines convent at Bianzè, where she changed her name to Orsola Maddalena after she took her vows.

Mary Beale | Baroque painter

Mary Beale (née Cradock; bapt. 26 March 1633 – bur. 8 October 1699) was an English portrait painter.

She was part of a small band of female professional artists working in London.

Beale became the main financial provider for her family through her professional work - a career she maintained from 1670/71 to the 1690s.

Beale was also a writer, whose prose Discourse on Friendship of 1666 presents scholarly, uniquely female take on the subject.