Just published
This vase exemplifies the Goryeo royal court’s exceptional taste for fine celadon.
Celadon Melon-shaped Bottle
Fun and festive, Nuit de Noël (Happy Couple) is exemplary of Malick Sidibé’s best known body of work: photographs of young people at social gatherings and events during the 1960s and 1970s.
Malick Sidibé, Nuit de Noël (Happy Couple)
Just how did Gothic architects support heavy stone ceilings and create the effect of heaven on earth?
Gothic architecture explained
Founding the Nation marks the rapid transformation of mainstream art into propaganda during the Mao era.
Dong Xiwen, The Founding of the Nation
This luxurious cross supposedly contained a fragment of the True Cross and was commissioned by the High King of Ireland
The Cross of Cong
More than 5 million artworks were produced in 17th-century Holland in the span of about 100 years
The Dutch art market in the 17th ...
The first Pre-Raphaelite painting by Sir John Everett Millais.
Sir John Everett Millais, Isabella
An octopus headdress belongs to an impressive Moche metalworking tradition.
Moche Octopus Headdress
In 1938, an excavation at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii revealed a small carved ivory of Indian origin.
An Indian ivory statuette in Pompeii
After the Spanish invasions in Mexico, many objects associated with Indigenous religion and knowledge were burned or destroyed.
“Burning of the Idols,” in Diego Muñoz ...
Talavera poblana, the distinct blue-and-white ceramics from Puebla Mexico, have a complex and fascinating history of transpacific and transatlantic connections.
Talavera poblana
Escudos de monjas are an important genre of art made in the viceroyalty of New Spain, one that gives us a glimpse into how nuns fashioned themselves.
Escudos de monjas, or nuns’ badges, in ...
Millais's wife referred to this stunning painting as "full of beauty and without subject."
John Everett Millais, Spring (Apple Blossoms)
Idealized depictions of sugar plantations and African laborers in Dutch-colonial Brazil were popular in the Dutch art market in the 17th century
Painting Brazil for the Dutch art market, ...
Using found objects, Rina Banerjee illuminates the obscured histories of Black and South Asian populations in New Orleans.
Rina Banerjee, commerce out of the Earth
An wrote this calligraphy work in March 1910, shortly before his death—and added his distinctive handprint.
An Junggeun, Calligraphy work of his final ...
Stored inside a granite casket, this urn is elaborately decorated with a stamped pattern of flowers and covered with an even coating of green glaze
Browse Smarthistory images for teaching & learning!
