From the elements of art to the great goddess Durga — Smarthistory is adding new content every week.
Prehistoric to contemporary
videos + essays
Hasegawa Tōhaku, Pine Trees
This pair of six-panel screens beautifully captures the richness of a Japanese landscape.
David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (One Day This Kid . . .)
Having the young Wojnarowicz’s face disseminated as a visible queer child was a potent political symbol.
Richard Evans, Portraits of the Caribbean’s first Black king and prince
These portraits remain important images of post-revolutionary Haiti and Christophe’s reign, encapsulating the complexities of his ambitions and the path he sought for his country in an international stage as the Americas’ first Black nation
Édouard Baldus, Cloister of St. Trophîme, Arles
Baldus’s Cloister of St. Trophîme, Arles aspired to use photography to make an imagined reality visible, tangible, and therefore achievable.
Wang Shimin, Cloud Capped Mountains and Misty Riverside
Wang Shimin reimagines the past in this Qing dynasty landscape
Zhao Zhiqian, Flowers Album
Peonies, plum blossoms, radishes, and cabbages are all depicted in these calligraphic ink paintings
Winslow Homer, Taking Sunflower to Teacher
Painted during Reconstruction, this sentimental watercolor depicts the hope of transformation and possibility
Egyptian deities
Osiris, Isis, Horus, Ra, Hathor, Seth, Taweret—With more than 1,500 named deities, the Egyptian pantheon was complex and vast
Samarra, a palatial city
The Abbasid caliphs spared no expense to build a palatial city of grand buildings and sprawling residential complexes
Abu’l Hasan, Emperor Jahangir Embraces Shah ‘Abbas
This work of watercolor, ink, silver and gold on paper isn't just brilliantly executed—it's also layered with meaning, capturing the complexity of early 17th-century power politics in Southern Asia
Amazigh (Berber) jewelry
These elaborate ear pendants and headdress were worn by Jewish or Berber women in modern-day Morocco
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