The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables is the most famous painting by the most acclaimed Spanish painter of the latter half of the seventeenth century
Location: Museo del Prado
An imagined garden teeming with curious creatures and bizarre structures. What are we to think?
Spotlight — Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of ...
Wild! Everything seems transient in this otherworldly scene, but El Greco’s bold colors stay with us.
El Greco, Adoration of the Shepherds
Ribera depicts the moment before St. Philip’s death, yet the martyr’s body distorts and collapses before our eyes.
Jusepe de Ribera, The Martyrdom of Saint ...
With its sumptuous foliage and gold detail, this painting celebrates the decorative and captures the spiritual.
Fra Angelico, The Annunciation and Life of ...
Mantegna’s draped figures resurrect classical sculpture, but the landscape was from life—that’s Renaissance Mantua.
Andrea Mantegna, Dormition (or Death) of the ...
This puzzling painting about painting is half genre scene, half family portrait. But what’s on the large canvas?
Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas
Goya depicts the king’s family in scintillating detail… but the sparkle of the monarchy is beginning to fade.
Francisco Goya, The Family of Charles IV
Don’t strike the messenger! Interrupted at his forge, a horrified Vulcan looks ready to hammer Apollo.
Diego Velázquez, Vulcan’s Forge
Velázquez lends immediacy and gritty realism to a mythological subject. We are right there, ready to partake.
Diego Velázquez, Los Borrachos (The Drunks), or ...
Goya’s taste in home décor is called into question by this cannibalistic meditation on the nature of power.
Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring One Of His ...
No paint touched those gloves! This portrait advertises Dürer’s skill—both the work of his mind and of his hand.
Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait (1498)
You can taste the tears... Rogier captures grieving bodies with meticulousness and compositional rhythm.
Rogier van der Weyden, Deposition
Care for some magic berries? This hallucinogenic landscape offers up a bizarre mix of creation and damnation.
Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights
A sinister tale of bloodlust and nepotism led to the tragic events Goya depicts in “the first modern painting.”
Francisco Goya, The Third of May, 1808
Disorganized and youthful, Dutch troops surrender to the seasoned Spanish army. Count the victors’ spears!
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