From Michelangelo to Rubens, Degas and Picasso, erotic art has attracted many great masters, who created works that captivate the beholder like few others. In spite of, or maybe even because of, this...
“All living beings are Buddhas and have wisdom and virtue within them.” (Buddha) Buddha ranks among the most depicted holy figures of the world – perhaps appearing more than Christ, a subject widely...
Ever since its triumph at the Paris Universal Exposition, Art Nouveau has continued to inspire artists. The movement offered an artistic response to the industrial revolution and the creative vacuum...
Die Renaissance begann gegen Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts in Italien und breitete sich bis zur zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts über ganz Europa aus. Die Wiederentdeckung der Pracht des griechischen...
Different eras and civilisations have treated erotic images with varying acceptance and different concepts of erotica and these tendencies are reflected within the works themselves. From ancient...
The Baroque period lasted from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth century. Baroque art was artists’ response to the Catholic Church’s demand for solemn grandeur...
Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi) (Florence, 1445 – 1510) Botticelli était le fils d'un citoyen jouissant d'une situation confortable, et avait été «instruit dans toutes les choses...
Deriving from the French word rocaille, in reference to the curved forms of shellfish, and the Italian barocco, the French created the term ‘Rococo’. Appearing at the beginning of the 18th century, it...
The Renaissance began at the end of the 14th century in Italy and had extended across the whole of Europe by the second half of the 16th century. The rediscovery of the splendour of ancient Greece and...
Goya is perhaps the most approachable of painters. His art, like his life, is an open book. He concealed nothing from his contemporaries, and offered his art to them with the same frankness. The...
Inspired by Monet’s work at a young age, Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a friend and disciple of Georges Seurat who combined the scientific precision of pointillism with the vivid colors and emotional...
Gothic art finds its roots in the powerful architecture of the cathedrals of northern France. It is a medieval art movement that evolved throughout Europe over more than 200 years. Leaving curved...
In art history, the term ‘Romanesque art’ distinguishes the period between the beginning of the 11th and the end of the 12th century. This era showed a great diversity of regional schools each with...
A symbol of modernity, the Viennese Secession was defined by the rebellion of twenty artists who were against the conservative Vienna Künstlerhaus' oppressive influence over the city, the epoch, and...
Marc Chagall was born into a strict Jewish family for whom the ban on representations of the human figure had the weight of dogma. A failure in the entrance examination for the Stieglitz School did...
Paul Gauguin was first a sailor, then a successful stockbroker in Paris. In 1874 he began to paint at weekends as a Sunday painter. Nine years later, after a stock-market crash, he felt confident of...
Picasso was born a Spaniard and, so they say, began to draw before he could speak. As an infant he was instinctively attracted to artist’s tools. In early childhood he could spend hours in happy...
Van Dyck was accustomed early to Rubens’ sumptuous lifestyle; and, when he visited Italy with letters of introduction from his master, lived in the palaces of his patrons, himself adopting such an...
Whistler suddenly shot to fame like a meteor at a crucial moment in the history of art, a field in which he was a pioneer. Like the impressionists, with whom he sided, he wanted to impose his own...
The art of porcelain manufacturing is linked closely to China and its history, appearing in the 7th century when it became an important symbol of royalty or high status. The masterpieces of the genre...
