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AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot)

@aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social

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Sharing artworks from the Art Institute of Chicago's European Painting and Sculpture department. Automated thanks to @andreitr.bsky.social and @botfrens.bsky.social

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AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 6m

Fishing Boats off an Estuary www.artic.edu/artworks/16370

With its low horizon line, monochrome palette, and direct paint handling, this intimate panel is characteristic of the river landscapes of Jan van Goyen’s early maturity. He used the white ground to impart a luminous tonality to his rapidly brushed paintings. In a society that provided a broad market for art, Van Goyen was an active dealer, auctioneer, and appraiser, as well as a prolific maker of art.

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 1h

Portrait of a Man with Gray Hair www.artic.edu/artworks/15708

Gift of Charles Deering McCormick, Brooks McCormick, and the Estate of Roger McCormick

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 3h

Crucifixion of Saint Peter www.artic.edu/artworks/22912

Richard T. Crane, Jr. Endowment

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 7h

Annunciation to the Shepherds www.artic.edu/artworks/109220

Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 8h

Virgin and Child Crowned by Angels www.artic.edu/artworks/16257

Colyn de Coter directed a workshop in Brussels well into the 16th century, but his style and subjects reflect the traditions of the great 15th-century Netherlandish painters Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, and Rogier van der Weyden. Here the well-appointed, bourgeois interior underscores Christ’s humanity, even as angels crown the Virgin as the Queen of Heaven. Like his predecessors, De Coter used details of the setting to emphasize both the human and divine aspects of Christ’s nature. Thus, the lion carved on the arm of Mary’s chair alludes to the biblical throne of Solomon, and the prayer inscribed on the hem of her cloak hails her as "mother of the king of angels." The somewhat claustraphobic treatment of space reflects de Coter’s own style.

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Scene from the Legend of Saint Perpetua www.artic.edu/artworks/24711

Anonymous Gift

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, Saint Gereon, and a Donor www.artic.edu/artworks/16329

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The Fountains www.artic.edu/artworks/57051

The painting of Classical ruins had reached the zenith of its popularity when Hubert Robert, the leading French practitioner of this specialty, was commissioned in 1787 to paint a suite of four canvases for a wealthy financier’s château at Méréville, near Paris. The Fountains and its companion pieces were set into the paneled walls of a salon in the château, creating an alternate space that played off of the elegant, Neoclassical decor of the room. Robert has studied in Rome from 1754 to 1765 and there had gleaned his artistic vocabulary. Like the other three large paintings from the group painted for Méréville, all in the Art Institute, The Fountains exploits Robert’s typical vocabulary of fictive niches, arches, coffered vaults, colonnades, majestic stairwells, and Roman statuary to create a fantasy of expansive space. The four paintings are inhabited by tiny figures in the foreground; these serve only to set the scale and animate the scene, for the ruins themselves are the true subject of the pictures. In his use of ruins, Robert embodied the notion of the relationship of mankind and the built environment to nature that was expressed by the French philosopher and encyclopedist Denis Diderot: “Everything vanishes, everything dies, only time endures.”

Gift of William G. Hibbard

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Portico with a Lantern www.artic.edu/artworks/5288

Gift of Clive Runnells

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Young Spartan Girls Challenging Boys www.artic.edu/artworks/13487

In 1859 Edgar Degas returned to Paris following a prolonged stay in Italy, where he visited relatives in Naples and Florence and attended life classes at the Académie Française in Rome. This picture, undertaken around 1860, speaks to his ambition to realize canvases featuring scenes from the Bible, as well as ancient and more recent history. Degas took his subject from the life of Lycurgus, a legendary ninth-century b.c. Spartan lawgiver. Lycurgus’s social reforms included an unusual method of physical training in which adolescent girls competed on an equal footing with boys, exercising nude in public. Degas would have worked up this monochromatic sketch with layers of color had he completed it, but he left it unfinished when he began a second version of the subject (National Gallery of Art, London).

Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Sketch for The Revolt of Cairo www.artic.edu/artworks/152851

Restricted gift of Mrs. James W. Alsdorf; Bequest of Luella Thomas; Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial and Alexander A. McKay endowments

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Mary of Burgundy www.artic.edu/artworks/70981

Jean-Auguste Barre was celebrated for his statuettes of contemporary celebrities and historical personages. This sculpture is a particularly ambitious example of a small bronze depicting a historical subject. Mary of Burgundy (1457–1482), the daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, died unexpectedly in a riding accident. Barre depicted the moment just before her tragic fall, as she hunts with a falcon, accompanied by a page. The rich attention to detail on the bronze’s surface contributes to the pictorial nature of the composition.

Bequest of Arthur Rubloff

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Portrait of Madame Guerin www.artic.edu/artworks/105534

Gift of Sara Lee Corporation in memory of its founder, Nathan Cummings

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Battle Scene www.artic.edu/artworks/93394

George F. Harding Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Diana and Endymion www.artic.edu/artworks/12876

Gift of Jacob S. Sherman

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Woman Bathing Her Feet in a Brook www.artic.edu/artworks/153799

Camille Pissarro referred to this painting in a letter of November 1894, when he wrote to his son Lucien that he wanted to send him a picture of “a little peasant girl dipping her feet in the water.” At the time, he considered the work almost finished but still lacking “that little something,” exclaiming optimistically, “I think I will get it, I feel it!” His continued ruminations on the composition may explain its heavily encrusted surface. After finishing it, he painted a variation featuring a nude (a rarity for the artist) in the same pose and setting (1895; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

A Millennium Gift of Sara Lee Corporation

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Project for a Monument to a General www.artic.edu/artworks/48971

Gift of Charles Deering McCormick, Brooks McCormick, and the Estate of Roger McCormick [exchange of 1970.468]

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Rocks at the Lighthouse, Biarritz www.artic.edu/artworks/66144

Bequest of Maribel G. Blum

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Bust of a Satyr www.artic.edu/artworks/89236

Bessie Bennett and Charles Netcher Memorial Fund

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

One of the Set of the Four Evangelists: Matthew www.artic.edu/artworks/79573

Kate S. Buckingham Endowment

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Snow at Louveciennes www.artic.edu/artworks/45838

Camille Pissarro made this small oil on panel painting showing trees and houses blanketed by a heavy snow at Louveciennes, the village west of Paris where he lived. Using a limited palette of shades of white, brown, blue, tan, gray, and green to evoke the gray skies and freshly fallen snow of a cold winter day, Pissarro created a scene that has the freshness and spontaneity of a work painted outdoors. Only the footsteps of a solitary figure, walking below the screen of trees, break the silence of this intimate and poetic winter scene.

Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Endowment

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The Head of Saint John the Baptist Brought before Herod www.artic.edu/artworks/16171

Giovanni di Paolo worked within the conservative artistic tradition of Siena, creating rich patterns and an intensely devotional mood in his paintings. Among his finest narrative works are these six panels, part of a series of twelve depicting the life of Saint John the Baptist, the kinsman and prophet of Christ. Other panels from the series are scattered in European and American collections; they may originally have formed the doors of a shrine housing a relic of the saint. In the first of the Art Institute's panels, the young Baptist enters the wilderness to live as a hermit; later he foretells Christ's role as redeemer, is imprisoned, and is finally martyred at the request of Salome, the step-daughter of King Herod.

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Portrait of a Musician www.artic.edu/artworks/88374

Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Landscape www.artic.edu/artworks/893

Henry Field Memorial Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Houses in Optevoz, France www.artic.edu/artworks/94842

Henry Field Memorial Collection

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Nymphs and Satyrs Drinking www.artic.edu/artworks/46382

A. A. McKay Fund

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Portrait of a Woman www.artic.edu/artworks/86782

Gift of Charles L. Hutchinson

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The Covenant www.artic.edu/artworks/87054

A. A. McKay Fund

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The Death of the Virgin www.artic.edu/artworks/16177

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Archangel Michael Overcoming the Devil www.artic.edu/artworks/147876

Bequest of Chester D. Tripp

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Rape of the Sabines www.artic.edu/artworks/53488

Gift of Mrs. Richard E. Danielson and Mrs. Chauncey McCormick

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Kitchen Scene www.artic.edu/artworks/21934

Robert A. Waller Memorial Fund

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Retable of Saints Athanasius, Blaise, and Agatha www.artic.edu/artworks/111444

Gift of the Antiquarian Society

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Wounded Lioness www.artic.edu/artworks/883

Henry Field Memorial collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Saint Catherine of Siena www.artic.edu/artworks/25778

A gifted follower of Perugino, Lo Spagna expanded on the master’s calm style in numerous works made for Perugia and the surrounding region of Umbria. This panel represents Catherine Benincasa of Siena (1347–1380), who was one of the major religious figures and most influential women of the late Middle Ages. Affiliated with the Dominican order, she was renowned for her devotion to the poor and sick, as well as for her mystical visions. In one such vision, she saw herself marked with Christ’s wounds from his crucifixion, known as the stigmata. These marks are faintly visible on the backs of her hands in the present work and serve to identify her.

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Armida Abandoned by Rinaldo www.artic.edu/artworks/16492

The third scene from Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s brilliant suite of decorations for a room in the Venetian palace of the Cornaro family, this painting shows the emotional climax of the story of Rinaldo and Armida. The knight Rinaldo has been persuaded by his companions, Carlo and Ubaldo, to renounce the love of the beautiful sorceress Armida. The gazes of the figures express the tension of the moment. Bareheaded and pensive, Rinaldo has taken up his arms again and appears to hesitate as the older knights gesture toward the boat that will carry them back to the crusader army. Armida tries vainly to detain him with her imploring gaze and provocatively bare, outstretched leg.

Bequest of James Deering

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Christ Washing the Feet of His Disciples www.artic.edu/artworks/58052

Nicolas Bertin was primarily a painter of religious, mythological, and allegorical subjects. Although trained in the rigorous French academic traditions, he often emulated the broader style of Titian, Paolo Veronese, and other Venetian Renaissance masters. For his depiction of Christ washing Saint Peter's feet just after the Last Supper (John 13:4-5), Bertin created a majestic, theatrical backdrop reminiscent of those in Veronese's pictures. Through gesture and facial expression Bertin adeptly described a range of emotions, from surprise and puzzlement to humility.

Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Easter Mystery (Mystère de Pâques) www.artic.edu/artworks/133862

Through prior acquisition of William Wood Prince

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The Temptation of Saint Jerome www.artic.edu/artworks/110242

Best known for his Lives of the Artists, a monumental compendium of biographies, Giorgio Vasari was a successful architect and a prolific painter for the Medici dukes of Florence. As a learned artist, he imparted an allegorical element to this frequently depicted episode from the life of Saint Jerome. The saint—a scholar, translator of the Bible, and advocate of monasticism—vividly described the tempting visions that assailed him when he retreated to the desert to meditate. In this painting, Jerome contemplates a crucifix; his visions are personified as Venus, the goddess of love, accompanied by cupids. Although Venus seems to flee, one of the troublesome cupids still aims his arrow at the saint. The work is unfinished: the black-chalk grid, used as aid in enlarging and transferring the preparatory drawing onto the panel, is still visible through the initial thinly applied paint layers.

Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Scenes from the Life of Saint John the Baptist www.artic.edu/artworks/25740

Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Hercules and Lychas www.artic.edu/artworks/94163

Gift of the Antiquarian Society in honor of John Maxon

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Study Head of a Bearded Man www.artic.edu/artworks/93372

Directing large workshop that produced religious and mythological paintings in Antwerp, Frans Floris pioneered the use of head studies like this one to work out expression and movement for complex figural compositions. Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, and other painters of historical subjects in the 17th century continued this practice. Whereas large finished works from Floris's shop probably involved the participation of assistants, head studies were executed by the master himself. This study, which may represent Hercules or a figure from a Last Judgement, is marked with his monogram FFF in the upper-left corner.

Gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Washerwomen at the Edge of the Pond www.artic.edu/artworks/52180

Gift of William Hobson Green

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Centaur Abducting a Nymph www.artic.edu/artworks/29398

Gift of Mrs. Siegfried Schmidt

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Claude Bailliot www.artic.edu/artworks/152767

Gift of Samuel and Marie Louise Rosenthal - Rosenthal-Daumier Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Annunciation to the Shepherds www.artic.edu/artworks/109220

Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Tiger Resting www.artic.edu/artworks/884

Henry Field Memorial Collection

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Portrait of a Man www.artic.edu/artworks/10281

Robert A. Waller Memorial Fund

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Bust of a Nobleman in Armor www.artic.edu/artworks/22278

This portrait bust of an unknown nobleman in armor, sporting the stiff ruff characteristic of men’s fashion in Europe in the first quarter of the 17th century, was once thought to portray the Genoese aristocrat Ambrogio Spinola or an anonymous naval officer. Previously attributed to the French Mannerist sculptor Germain Pilon (1535–1590), it currently bears an attribution to Pietro Tacca, court sculptor to the Medici grand dukes in the first half of the 17th century. However, the immediacy and supplely rendered flesh of this portrait suggest that it was executed by an artist associated with Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), the most famous Italian sculptor of the period.

Tillie C. Cohn Endowment

000

AIC: European Painting and Sculpture (Bot) @aiceuropeanpaint.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Arlésiennes (Mistral) www.artic.edu/artworks/19339

One of seventeen canvases that Paul Gauguin completed during a brief and tumultuous visit with Vincent van Gogh in Arles, this powerful and enigmatic painting depicts the public garden directly across from Van Gogh’s residence, the “Yellow House.” Not only is the careful planning of the composition in marked contrast to the spontaneity seen in Van Gogh’s depiction of the same scene (State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg), but everything about the painting—its large, ﬂat areas of color; arbitrary handling of space; and enigmatic silhouettes—also exemplifies the deliberateness with which Gauguin sought pictorial harmony and symbolic content in his work. Here four women wrapped in shawls slowly stroll through the garden. The two closest to the viewer avert their gazes and curiously cover their mouths. Their somber outlines echo the two orange cones, which probably represent shrubs wrapped against the frost. The bench along the upper-left path rises steeply, defying logical perspective. Equally puzzling is the mysterious bush on the left, in which Gauguin consciously embedded forms that suggest eyes and a nose, creating the impression of a strange, watchful presence. With its aura of repressed emotion and elusive meaning, Arlésiennes (Mistral) explores the ambiguities, mysteries, and emotions that Gauguin believed underlie appearances.

Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection