Las Meninas (Great Art)

LAS MENINAS (Diego Velázquez, Spanish, 1656)

Las Meninas ("The Ladies-in-waiting") is a large (over 10 x 9 feet) 1656 painting by Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. The focus--the little girl in white--is the "Infanta" (Princess) Margaret Theresa. On either side of her are the titular ladies in waiting; to our right, two dwarfs (one with his foot on the dog); behind the dwarfs a chaperone and a guard; in the doorway behind, the queen's chamberlain; and on the left, facing a large easel with its back to us, is the artist Velázquez himself. Intriguingly, a mirror hangs on the wall above the Infanta's head; in it are her parents, Spain's King Philip IV and his wife, Mariana of Austria. It has been suggested that they are sitting for a portrait by Velázquez, and the painting we see here is what they would have been looking at as they patiently sit. The ladies, it has been suggested, are trying to cajole the Infanta into joining her parents for the portrait. Marvelous!

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)

Impression, Sunrise (Great Art)

IMPRESSION, SUNRISE (Claude Monet, French, 1872)

In 1872 French artist Claude Monet visited his hometown, Le Havre, a port on France's northwestern coast. There he painted a series of six canvases representing the port at different times of day and seen from different points of view. One of these, Impression, Sunrise, was included in the first exhibition of what became Impressionism, and this painting typified the style. (By using this title, Monet may have been anticipating criticism that the painting seemed unfinished.) Some say this canvas changed the art world.

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)

Girl with a Pearl Earring (Great Art)

GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING (Johannes Vermeer, Dutch, 1665)

This painting has not always been known by this title; through the centuries it has been called "Portrait in Antique Costume, uncommonly artistic," "Girl with a Turban," and "Head of a Young Girl." The closest name to the current one was simply "The Pearl," which may have alluded as much to the subject's complexion as to her jewelry. (One modern scholar has proposed that the earring is not a pearl at all, but a piece of polished tin!) To some, the allure of the painting is akin to that of the Mona Lisa, with the woman's disarmingly confident gaze at the viewer. The painting has inspired numerous poems and stories; one historical novel based on it became a 2003 film starring Scarlett Johansson as the "girl," imagined to be a servant of Vermeer who models for the painting.

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)

The Arnolfini Portrait (Great Art)

THE ARNOLFINI PORTRAIT (Jan van Eyck, Early Netherlandish, 1434)

The Arnolfini Portrait is one of the most famous "couple's portraits" in the world, as well as one of the most complex paintings in Western art. It shows a richly-dressed man and woman standing in a private room. They are believed to be Giovanni di Nicolao di Arnolfini, an Italian merchant working in Bruges, and his wife. Every object in the room has been carefully chosen to display their wealth and social status. The man's hand seems raised in greeting; a mirror in the back reflects two men entering the room, one of whom also raises his arm. (The mirror shows us the fourth wall of the room!) The painting has been in the National Gallery in London since 1842.

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)

The Kiss (Klimt) (Great Art)

THE KISS (Gustav Klimt, Austrian, 1907-08)

Few paintings have the odd visual impact of Gustav Klimt's The Kiss. At first it just looks like an abstract image, but when we see the faces (and her feet, where she is bent at the knee) we realize what it shows: lovers entwined together in contrasting robes, lying on a field of flowers and with flowers in their hair. After painting oil on a 6x6-foot canvas, Klimt added gold leaf to the painting's surface to create an ethereal effect. This medieval technique contrasts with the modern patterns on the robes, as do the flowers. It is Klimt's most popular work.

• Despite the robes, the painting (originally titled The Lovers) was widely considered pornographic when it was first exhibited in 1908.
• In the same way, his use of gold leaf, used in religious images in the Middle Ages, was considered by some to be sacrilegious.

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)

The Night Watch by Rembrandt (Great Art)

THE NIGHT WATCH (Rembrandt van Rijn; Dutch; 1642)

One of the most famous paintings of the Dutch Golden Age is the work we call The Night Watch. It is huge: 12 x over 14 feet. (The formal names for it are equally huge.) It features what photographers call "Rembrandt lighting" and painters call "tenebrism," with strong light-and-shadow. Its figures seem to be in motion, an unusual element in a "group photo." Rembrandt also used a "spotlight" effect to single out the three most important figures: two men in the foreground  (a captain and his lieutenant, named in one version of the title), and a woman behind them bearing symbols of their military unit (named in another).

• The work is formally called Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, OR The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch.

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)

The Scream (Great Art)

THE SCREAM (Edvard Munch, Norwegian, 1893)

One (presumably cold) January evening in 1893 in Oslo, Norway, artist Edvard Munch was out for a sunset stroll with a couple of friends. Per his own account, as the sky turned blood red, he paused and leaned on a fence. "My friends walked on," he wrote, "and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature..." He made two paintings and two pastels conveying this experience, called Shriek in Norwegian and, true to Munch's impetus, The Scream of Nature in German. The actual face may have been inspired by a mummy he could have seen in Paris in 1889. The Scream is widely seen as symbolizing the anxiety of the human condition.

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)

The Starry Night (Great Art)

THE STARRY NIGHT (Vincent van Gogh, Dutch, 1889)

American singer-songwriter Don McLean's song "Vincent" opens with the lines: "Starry, starry night..." and brings out all the anguish this tortured soul endured. Vincent van Gogh died by his own hand in 1890 at age 37, but not before producing this and about 860 other oil paintings. The one dates to about a year before his death, and depicts the view from the window of his room at a "lunatic asylum" in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. (The village in the middle ground is imaginary.) One of the most recognized paintings in Western art, some consider it the artist's magnum opus.

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)

The Mona Lisa (Great Art)

THE MONA LISA (Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1503–1506)

The "world's most famous painting" is more properly called La Gioconda, the model's name. The enigmatic smile has been celebrated in story and song, and da Vinci loved the work so much that he never let it go: it was in his rooms when he died. France’s King Francis I acquired it and it has been on display at the Louvre since 1797.

• The work was stolen by an Italian patriot in 1911 and returned 2-1/2 years later. The theft made the previously "minor" painting famous overnight.

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)