By Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

With its fantastical setting and lovers’ dance, this painting introduced a new genre: the “fête galante.”

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By Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

A self-portrait demonstrates the artist's skills in achieving a likeness but it can also convey messages about the artist’s identity and inner life.

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By Marlise Brown

German architecture in the 18th century refashioned the imported French Rococo and Italian Baroque styles to create something distinct.

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By Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

In style and story, this rigorously organized canvas looked back to antiquity; it soon became an icon of Revolution.

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By Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

Girodet references ancient Greek sculpture but his softness anticipates Romanticism. The entire painting glows!

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By Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

Like a phoenix, this church rose from the ashes. Wren’s enormous dome was the first of its kind in England.

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By Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

Smooth talkers, vain aristocrats, disreputable doctors, unfaithful lovers—Hogarth’s moralizing takes no prisoners.

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By Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

Peale’s sons beckon us up the stairs, but be careful—it might hurt!

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By Dr. David W. Penney, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Dr. Steven Zucker

This outfit was likely made for a British lieutenant and gifted to him in a ritual exchange to show mutual respect.

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By Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Mindy Besaw, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

A Jewish family in New York and London during the French Indian Wars

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By Brandy Culp, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Dr. Steven Zucker

Global trade in a cup of tea: Colonial America, sugar and slavery.

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By Dr. Beth Harris, Julie Wilson Frick, Denver Art Museum, Sabena Kull

These challenging paintings visually separate Indigenous Americans from the Spanish elite; most were exported.

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By Dr. Jocelyn Anderson

Made for a sultan, this unusual automaton emblematizes the fierce hostility between British and Indian rulers.

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By Dr. Susan Waller

This portrait of an unnamed woman speaks volumes about slavery, politics, and gender in revolutionary France.

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By Carla Colon

Genealogical Inka portraits like these were banned by the Spanish who feared they would inspire uprisings.

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By Dr. Bryan Zygmont

Jefferson’s “academical village” for living and learning is crowned by a building inspired by the Pantheon.

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