Here and now, confronted with the Maestà, we are not in the Louvre admiring art, but doing exactly what Cimabue (c. 1240–1302) meant his viewers

A sower went out to sow. Thus begins the world, thus begins the Gospel, thus begins this painting… The arm is flung forward, the hand

The San Zeno Altarpiece is a monumental triptych painted by Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431–1506) between 1457 and 1460 for the high altar of the Basilica

Here is a charming work by Murillo (1617–1682); it is little known because it belongs to a private collection. The Holy Family is depicted in

Giovanni Battista Tinti (1558–1617) was an Italian mannerist painter who settled in Parma. He was one of the artists who best understood and translated into

“Let him who is thirsty come!” The Basilica of Saint Mark in Venice—consecrated in 1094—was erected to house the relics of Saint Mark that were

On the wall of monastic cell 32 of San Marco Convent, in Florence, the Dominican friar Guido di Pietro (c. 1395–1445)—called Fra Angelico—painted a fresco

This beautiful miniature introduces chapter 30 of a richly illuminated manuscript produced in the Île de France around the year 1410. The text, in French,

Fray Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560–1627) lived in Toledo, Spain, ­until the age of forty-three. In that city he was an esteemed painter. There he met

A painter of icons from the Island of Crete, El Greco (1541–1614) arrived in Venice at the age of twenty-seven and grew close to Tintoretto