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Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy
Artist: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Italian, 1571-1610)
Oil on canvas: 37 x 51 in.
c. 1594-95
The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1943.222
One of the miracles most commonly associated with the life of Francis of Assisi is his assumption of the stigmata, the wounds of Christ’s crucifixion. Caravaggio’s depiction of Francis’ receiving the stigmata as an intensely private event demonstrates how the artist revolutionized contemporary Roman painting through his realistic rendering of detail, dramatic use of light, and psychological interpretation of narrative. Francis swoons in ecstasy as an angel supports him. With one eye open, the saint seems to see something hidden from us. The miracle is suggested subtly by the cascade of light and the wound in his side. In the background to the left is the sleeping figure of Brother Leo, who was with Francis during the stigmatization. Farther back, shepherds grouped around a campfire marvel at the illumination of the night sky.
The Lady of Shalott
Artist: William Holman Hunt
(English, 1827-1905)
Oil on canvas: 74 1/8 x 57 5/8 in
1886-1905
The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1961.470
Hunt’s Lady of Shalott illustrates the poem of the same title by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) based on an episode from Arthurian romance. Hunt interpreted the poem as a cautionary tale against straying from duty. He depicts the moment when the Lady of Shalott, doomed to weave tapestries from mirror reflections, glances out of the window to gaze directly at the gallant Sir Lancelot. The mirror cracks. Chaos and confusion overtake her sheltered existence and her work unravels.
In 1848, Hunt, with John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which repudiated the artificiality of academic art by following stylistic precepts that had guided artists before Raphael. Hunt in particular embraced themes of high moral purpose. He was also concerned with rendering his image in a highly finished, detailed style. The complexity of his richly painted composition reflects contemporary fascination with intricate pattern, decorative beauty, and the energy of swirling line.
Interior of a Picture Gallery with the Collection of Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga
Artist: Giovanni Paolo Panini
(Italian, 1691-1765)
1740
The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1948.478
Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga (1690-1756), whose picture gallery is shown in this painting, was secretary of state to Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758). In addition to his duties in the papal service, he took a keen interest in the arts, helping to found and install the Pinacoteca Capitolina, to reopen the Accademia di San Luca, to preserve ancient museums from plundering, and to regulate the exportation of works of art. Cardinal Gonzaga was also an avid collector, and the fruits of his collecting are partially depicted here. (The Cardinal stands with the artist in the center of the composition beside an enlarged copy of Raphael’s Madonna della Sedia).
Indolence (La Paresseuse Italienne)
Artist: Jean Baptiste Greuze
(French, 1725-1805)
Oil on canvas: 25 1/2 x 19 1/4 in.
1757
The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1934.11
During his lifetime Greuze was one of France’s leading artists. Although he was received into the Royal Academy as a genre painter, rather than a history painter as he had hoped, his ability to create moralizing images was recognized and widely praised by Denis Diderot and other art critics. While a resident in Rome from 1756 to 1759, Greuze painted this picture and several other satirical genre scenes. The French title for this work is La Paresseuse Italienne (The Lazy Italian), but the disheveled and possibly drunk or pregnant woman clearly represents the vice of Sloth or Indolence. The facial expression, pose, and material surroundings impart an indelible image of laziness, but one that is rendered with the utmost precision in the details and more than a little sensuality.
The Building of the Trojan Horse
Artist: Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
(Italian, 1727-1804)
Oil on canvas: 75 7/8 x 140 7/8 in.
c. 1773-4
The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1950.658
The story represented here is a scene from Greek history as told by Virgil in the Aeneid. In their quest to conquer the walled city of Troy, the Greeks resolved to victoriously end their siege by means of trickery. They built a giant wooden horse in which their soldiers were hidden and offered it to Troy as a supposed gesture of conciliation. During the night, the soldiers emerged from the horse and attacked the city. The moment shown here is during the construction of the horse. It is known that the artist painted two other scenes drawn from this story, The Procession of the Horse into Troy, and The Greeks Emerging from the Horse inside the Walls of Troy, but the finished versions of these compositions appear to be lost.
Self-Portrait
Artist: Gustave Courbet
(French, 1819-1877)
Black chalk on paper: 11 1/2 x 8 3/4 in.
1849
Purchased through the gift of James Junius Goodwin, 1950.605
Courbet portrayed himself smoking a pipe several times in the late 1840s. A painting of the same subject, in which he is seen with a dreamy, almost somnolent expression, was submitted to the Paris Salon of 1850-51. That painting, probably created in 1849, originally showed the artist wearing a hat, as in this drawing, which must date from this time. Courbet’s portrayal of himself as a peasant (he came from a family of wealthy farmers) may have been inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch genre paintings of marginal, even low-life subjects, such as in the work of Adriaen Brouwer. The defiant and arrogant expression Courbet assumes in this drawing, however, surely reflects his identification with the peasantry and his disdain of the social and artistic status quo of nineteenth-century France.
Nympheas, Water Lilies
Artist: Claude Monet
(French, 1840-1926)
Oil on canvas: 31 7/8 x 36 1/4 in.
1904
Bequest of Anne Parrish Titzell, 1957.622
In 1883 Monet moved to a home at Giverny, northwest of Paris. He eventually bought the property and planted his famous gardens, which included a lily pond spanned by a Japanese bridge. The shimmering surface of the pond became a frequent subject of his paintings, often on a monumental scale. In this Water Lilies Monet omits the shoreline and depicts the water’s surface and reflections of trees at the pond’s edge, thus giving the viewer an ambiguous, floating perspective.
Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach
Artist: Salvador Dalí
(Spanish, 1904-1989)
Oil on canvas: 45 x 56 5/8 in.
1938-39
The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1939.269
Glancing at this composition, the spectator sees a desolate beach, or a face, or a dish filled with pears, or a profile of a dog. These images are further fragmented as one continues to look: the dog’s collar becomes a bridge, his head a hill. The instability of appearances fascinated Dalí, one of the leading Surrealist artists, who sought to evoke the world of the unconscious by creating multivalent images. The meticulously rendered objects and fragments make the metamorphoses and unexpected juxtapositions of the objects even more startling.
Europe after the Rain
Artist: Max Ernst
(German, 1891-1976)
Oil on canvas: 21 5/8 x 58 1/3 in.
1940-42
The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1942.281
Ernst's picture, begun in occupied France but completed in New York where he had sought refuge from the Nazis, reflects his own bitter experience of war in Europe. Ernst “painted” Europe after the Rain using a Surrealist technique called decalcomania, in which wet paint is pressed onto the canvas with a sheet of glass, paper, or another smooth surface. The abrupt removal of the glass from the canvas creates a unique texture. Ernst then painted the sky and various images over and around these blotted and splotchy forms. The evocative composition that resulted from this technique suggests a fantastic landscape in a state of decay.
The Feast of Herod
Artist: Lucas Cranach the Elder
(German, 1472-1553)
Oil on panel: 32 x 47 1/8 in.
1531
The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1936.339
Salome danced for King Herod, and as a reward he promised her the head of John the Baptist. Cranach has depicted the moment when Salome, elaborately dressed and laden with fine jewels, presents Herod with the severed head. The opulence of the scene is in sharp contrast to the grotesque spectacle of the victim’s head. This New Testament subject was popular during the sixteenth century as an example of the power that women could wield over men; Cranach, who spent much of his career as a court painter in Wittenberg, Germany, treated the theme on several occasions.
Boy with a Hat
Artist: Michael Sweerts
(Flemish, 1618-1664)
Oil on canvas: 14 1/2 x 11 1/2 in.
c. 1655-56
The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1940.198
Sweerts had one of the most unusual careers of any seventeenth-century painter. Having spent his early creative years (from c. 1646 to 1655) in Rome, where he was knighted by the Pope and absorbed influences from various artists, including the followers of Caravaggio, he returned to his native Brussels to found a painting academy. He later traveled to Marseilles, Palestine, Aleppo (Syria), and Tabriz (present-day Iran), before dying at the age of forty-six in Goa on the west coast of India. Perhaps Sweerts’ most striking creations are his series of heads of youths, of which this example is considered his most brilliant. Each of these small-scale but detailed works—neither traditional portraits nor genre subjects—captures a certain physiognomic type and temperament. The youth, in this case a shepherd boy, usually looks away from the viewer and seems troubled by some highly personal emotion or reflection, conveyed here by the boy’s almost tearful expression.
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