With its relaxed poses and outdoor setting, this portrait exemplifies the “conversation piece.” But is it finished?
Love + marriage
This satirical series charts the fall of a womanizer whose decadent lifestyle lands him in debt, then bedlam.
William Hogarth, A Rake’s Progress
Complete with barnyard guests, this rural wedding party embodies the Enlightenment idea of “natural” man.
Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The Village Bride
With its fantastical setting and lovers’ dance, this painting introduced a new genre: the “fête galante.”
Antoine Watteau, Pilgrimage to Cythera
Bruegel offers up a slice of peasant life. Despite our historical distance, this is a wedding party we can attend.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peasant Wedding
Smooth talkers, vain aristocrats, disreputable doctors, unfaithful lovers—Hogarth’s moralizing takes no prisoners.
William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode
Who gets the girl? This event may be sacred, but Raphael treats us to a very human performance.
Raphael, Marriage of the Virgin
Entranced by the evil of the human psyche, we come face to face with art history’s creepiest snake.
Franz von Stuck, The Sin
With gold that recalls a Byzantine art, Klimt created a modern icon in this cosmic and eternal painting.
Gustav Klimt, The Kiss
That shell! That pose! That wind! So much in this painting seems impossible, not least its divine beauty.
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus
In this cycle, Fragonard indulges the viewer’s taste for theatre and pleasure. Subtly is in short supply!
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The ...
Diego is sturdy, solid, unmoving. Frida looks out, quizzically, and with her hand on his, seems to be breaking free.
Frida Kahlo, Frieda and Diego Rivera
On this marriage chest, domestic duties meet political concerns as Florence casts a wary eye on a changing East.
Cassone with the Conquest of Trebizond
Brancusi retains the materiality of the stone, honoring it rather than denying it as past artists had done.
Constantin Brancusi, The Kiss
Two famous lovers meet in this miniature—as do Persian and European painting traditions.
Khusraw Discovers Shirin Bathing
A tribute to home, hearth, and hounds, this painting hung in Queen Victoria’s sitting room and earned her praise.
Sir Edwin Landseer, Windsor Castle in Modern ...
That hat is a fantasy, but this print isn’t all fiction. Rembrandt depicts himself in the real-life act of drawing.
Rembrandt, Self-Portrait with Saskia
Be still, my heart! A portrait of Marie attracts the king’s gaze, yet our eyes zig-zag around this busy canvas.
Peter Paul Rubens, The Presentation of the ...
The intimacy of this clay sculpture is unprecedented in the ancient world. What can it tell us about Etruscan culture?
Sarcophagus of the Spouses (Rome)
One image, two episodes—and three cultures. This narrative of Rebecca contains multitudes.