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Photography

Capturing Light: The Pioneers of Photography in France

It all officially began in 1839 in two countries at the same time: in the UK, the Royal Academy announced the discovery of a method of capturing...

Magda Michalska 22 March 2024

Photography

5 Swedish Pioneering Female Photographers You Should Know

Mainstream history often overlooks women’s contributions. That’s why the fact that in Scandinavian countries, women took up photography as a...

Europeana 22 March 2024

Women Artists

Elisabetta Sirani: Pioneer, Teacher and Artist

Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665) was born in Bologna, a progressive city with a liberal attitude towards educating women. She was a pioneering female...

Gokce Dyson 22 March 2024

Photography

The Queen of Neoclassical Photography: Nelly

For many, photography is merely a sophisticated way of immortalizing the current and carrying that frozen moment – which is impossible to recreate...

Erol Degirmenci 22 March 2024

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond (died 1788), 1785, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA. Detail. Women Artists

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard: Female Icon of 18th-Century Paris

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard was one of the most prominent women artists of the end of the 18th century in Paris. Despite misogynistic policies for...

Jimena Escoto 21 March 2024

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: The Merode Altarpiece by Robert Campin

The Merode Altarpiece is one of the most famous works by Robert Campin and his workshop. It serves as a link between the medieval tradition and...

Alexandra Kiely 21 March 2024

Masterpiece Stories

Isenheim Altarpiece – Polyptych About Pain and Passion

Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald is a polyptych about pain and passion. It’s a complex piece consisting of several parts and sections,...

Magda Michalska 21 March 2024

Jan van Eyck, Ghent Altarpiece, 1432, detail Masterpiece Stories

Ghent Altarpiece: The Charmed Life of the Mystic Lamb

Come with us to visit the Van Eyck brothers, their monumental Ghent Altarpiece, and explore 500 years of intrigue, theft and revolutionary painting techniques.

Candy Bedworth 21 March 2024

European Art

Queen Elizabeth I – Portraits of the Last Tudor

Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was the only surviving child of King Henry VIII of England and his second wife Anne Boleyn. Being a girl was hard...

Sarah Mills 20 March 2024

Rococo

Masterpiece Story: Marriage A-la-Mode by William Hogarth

The 18th-century British painter William Hogarth created an insightful series of paintings about the arranged marriages of his times, entitled...

Pola Otterstein 19 March 2024

Reluctant Bride. Auguste Toulmouche, The Reluctant Bride, 1866, Private collection. Detail. Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: The Reluctant Bride by Auguste Toulmouche

Have you ever seen a bride more… angry? Should this not be the happiest day of her life? The Reluctant Bride or The Hesitant Fiancée by Auguste...

Jimena Escoto 19 March 2024

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: The Major’s Marriage Proposal by Pavel Fedotov

When you think of 19th-century Russia, images of Anna Karenina with black furs and white diamonds may come to mind. The lives of the wealthy...

James W Singer 19 March 2024