CMA: European Painting and Sculpture
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CMA: European Painting and Sculpture
@cmaeuropeanpaint.bsky.social
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Sharing public domain works from the European Painting and Sculpture department of Cleveland Museum of Art.
Automated #artbot thanks to @andreitr.bsky.social and @botfrens.bsky.social
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Ruins in a Rocky Landscape https://clevelandart.org/art/1958.472
In 1635, Rosa left his native Naples for Rome, the undisputed art center of the 17th century, where a new type of landscape painting was emerging, distinguished by the effects of light and atmosphere. Rosa’s fame grew quickly as a painter of landscapes that conjured the beauty and fertility of the Bay of Naples. Ruins in a Rocky Landscape incorporates classical ruins, iridescent reflections of light, and a pastoral tone evoked by the idling shepherds, exemplifying the work that earned Rosa his early fame. The dark, dramatic rocks that rise along the left foreshadow the wildness that Rosa would cultivate in his later sublime landscapes.
December 14, 2025 at 3:28 PM
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Portrait of a Prelate https://clevelandart.org/art/1947.210
Portrait of a Prelate
December 14, 2025 at 3:05 PM
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Crucified Christ https://clevelandart.org/art/1982.127
The highly finished surface of this sculpture, including the back, suggests it belonged to a refined collector. Small sculptures would often be held to admire details such as the strands of hair streaming onto Christ’s shoulders, the prominent veins in his forearms, and the intricate knotted cloth at his side.
December 14, 2025 at 12:47 PM
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Figure from a Crèche: Magus https://clevelandart.org/art/1972.368.11
The practice of creating scenes of the Nativity for the home dates from the early 1700s in Italy, where people began to set up doll-like figures of about a foot or less in height. The custom was particularly popular in Naples around 1800, where crèche scenes (crèche means cradle, or crib) included many figures, whose heads and hands of painted terracotta, stuffed cloth bodies, and clothing adapted from contemporary local costumes gave them an amazingly realistic character. Representations of the birth of Jesus can be traced to the first few centuries of Christianity. Both living creatures and sculptural depictions of them were used from early times. By the late middle ages it was customary to create life-size figures of wood or stone, naturalistically painted, to represent the characters who participated in the events of Jesus's early life. These sculptures were then arranged in scenes illustrating one or both of the most important of these events, the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Adoration of the Magi-the three kings from the East who came to pay homage to the Christ child. Used in churches, these large figures were especially popular in Italy, Central Europe, Spain, and Portugal. This Object in Focus presentation was organized by Henry Hawley, Curator of Renaissance and Later Decorative Arts and Sculpture.
December 14, 2025 at 9:54 AM
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Study for "The Presentation of Christ in the Temple" (for Saint Ulrich, Vienna) https://clevelandart.org/art/1963.326
This loosely painted sketch is the preliminary design for an altarpiece in the Church of Saint Ulrich, Vienna. Mary and Joseph have brought the infant Jesus to the temple to be inducted into the Jewish faith; the aged priest Simeon cradles the infant in his arms, turning his gaze to heaven as he realizes that he is holding the Son of God. Strong contrasts of light and shadow underscore the drama of the moment. <br><br>The frame is not original to this painting, but was made by an Austrian craftsman in the mid-1700s. Its florid style suits Maulbertsch’s flickering brushwork, and reflects the tradition of wood sculpture from Central Europe seen in other objects in the CMA's collection.
December 13, 2025 at 6:15 PM
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Saint Margaret https://clevelandart.org/art/1942.564
Gaggini was a member of a large family of sculptors whose Palermo workshop supplied monumental religious sculptures for the cathedrals of Palermo and Messina in Sicily and Montelione in Calabria. After 1507 Antonello himself worked for 15 years to produce marble sculptures for Palermo Cathedral. This figure of the legendary virgin martyr, Saint Margaret, was probably commissioned for one of these ecclesiastical foundations, possibly the chancel of Palermo Cathedral. The saint is shown reading from a book of hours (a sign of her piety) and trampling upon a dragon, the symbol of Satan. The dragon became the attribute by which she is recognized in sacred art.
December 13, 2025 at 3:35 PM
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Portrait of a Woman https://clevelandart.org/art/1944.93
In his 1642 address to the painter’s guild in Leiden, the artist Philips Angel said that the greatest painters could properly distinguish among a range of fabrics. In order to create the dazzling costume worn by this graceful woman, Terborch would have set up a mannequin with satin drapery so that he could closely observe and record every gradation of reflected light. Terborch built up the shimmering fabric with a network of fine flicks and sweeps of the brush, occasionally adding and wiping away tiny bits of paint to make the dress shine.
December 13, 2025 at 11:58 AM
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Virgin and Child in an Architectural Frame https://clevelandart.org/art/1972.122
Virgin and Child in an Architectural Frame
December 13, 2025 at 10:02 AM
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Castle on a River https://clevelandart.org/art/1973.2
Salomon van Ruysdael, the uncle of Jacob van Ruisdael, here represents a free interpretation of the Castle Loevenstein. In addition to its picturesque qualities, the castle had great political and cultural importance as the official state prison and a key fort in the southern Netherlands. Painted just before the Dutch won independence from Spain in 1648, the painting likely expressed nationalist pride for its owner.
December 12, 2025 at 6:48 PM
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Diva Julia https://clevelandart.org/art/1971.139.a
Diva Julia
December 12, 2025 at 4:09 PM
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Hercules and the Nemean Lion https://clevelandart.org/art/1967.135
Whereas the ancient sculpture of Hercules nearby may have served as a sacred offering, this Renaissance plaquette and statue were collected and appreciated for the sake of art. After strangling the Nemean lion, Hercules kept its pelt; the hero often wears it in depictions of other legends. Ancient Greek coins likely provided the model for this particular composition, in which Hercules lifts the lion off the ground as it claws at his torso and leg.
December 12, 2025 at 1:49 PM
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Lion Hunt https://clevelandart.org/art/1968.26
Lion Hunt
December 12, 2025 at 11:16 AM
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Kneeling Angel https://clevelandart.org/art/1966.18
This angel, and another now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, were probably originally placed on either side of a tabernacle—a structure designed to hold the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist—on an altar in a Christian church or private chapel. The angels would originally have had wings, and the now plain surface of the sculpture would have been painted or gilded. Ignaz Günther was among the most sought-after carvers of religious sculpture in southern Germany. His virtuoso skill is particularly evident here in the angel’s pious expression and elegantly formed hands and feet.
December 12, 2025 at 8:31 AM
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A Bearded Man Wearing a Hat https://clevelandart.org/art/1950.252
Amsterdam of the early 1600s was a religiously tolerant city, attracting many Jewish settlers of both Sephardic (Spanish and Portuguese) origin and Ashkenazic (Eastern European) descent. Rembrandt lived among both denominations and found inspiration in the manner and dress of the Ashkenazim, who maintained traditional comportment and attire and were less affluent than their Sephardim counterparts. As a result, many of the unidentified portraits from Rembrandt's late period once carried Jewish associations, but because of a lack of sufficient evidence, those assignations have since been reconsidered. Such is the case with <em>Portrait of a Man</em>, which was once considered a portrait of the Dutch Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) as well as a representation of a Jewish student. Rembrandt's authorship of the painting has also undergone reassessment. The broad and thinly painted cloak and hat suggests the painting is likely a workshop product and while it does display Rembrandt's characteristic interest in a sitter's introspection, the figure's thoughtfulness remains comparatively superficial.
December 11, 2025 at 6:10 PM
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Portrait of Pope Paul II Barbo (obverse) and (reverse) https://clevelandart.org/art/1984.16
Rediscovered with fervor in the Renaissance, profiles on ancient coins provided dignified models for Renaissance elites.
December 11, 2025 at 4:23 PM
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Putto as Summer https://clevelandart.org/art/1962.208.1
Putto as Summer
December 11, 2025 at 2:06 PM
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Low Waterfall in a Wooded Landscape with a Dead Beech Tree https://clevelandart.org/art/1967.63
Jutting from a dune in the foreground, the massive silvery trunk of a dead tree leads the eye across a waterfall and toward a distant sunlit field where travelers and a dog traverse a sandy path. Partly masked by trees, a ruined building is turned gold by the sun. In Jacob van Ruisdael’s landscapes, dead trees, waterfalls, and ruined buildings were visual expressions of the passage of time. Ruisdael devoted equal attention to the cloud-filled skies looming above the land, creating dramatic patterns of light and shadow and revealing the unseen movements of the wind.
December 11, 2025 at 12:42 PM
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Andromeda https://clevelandart.org/art/1981.227
To stop attacks by a sea monster sent to punish Queen Cassiopeia for bragging that she was more beautiful than the nymphs of the sea, an oracle decreed that her virgin daughter, Andromeda, be tied to a rock and sacrificed to the creature. The hero Perseus would eventually save her, but artists often chose this moment as an opportunity to display a young, nude woman, justified by a veneer of mythology.
December 11, 2025 at 9:32 AM
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Kneeling Satyr https://clevelandart.org/art/1985.86
Greek and Roman art and literature typically used satyrs as a form of grotesque comic relief, but Renaissance artists adopted them as jovial celebratory figures of nature and revelry.
December 10, 2025 at 7:03 PM
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A Musical Company https://clevelandart.org/art/1991.23
Despite the calm demeanor and elegant disposition of the figures, this interior scene probably represents the interior of a brothel, signaled by the row of female portraits in the background, rarely found in other paintings of this period. The depiction of music provides another clue to the subject. The recorder and violin, played without scores, were perceived as cruder instrumentation and associated with prostitution, versus the elegant and complicated musicmaking seen in the work by Pieter de Hooch in our collection.
December 10, 2025 at 4:51 PM
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Venus and a Satyr https://clevelandart.org/art/1982.144
Elhafen depicted mythological scenes in many small ivory reliefs intended for domestic decoration. As with any work in ivory, the size of the tusk dictated this relief’s scale.
December 10, 2025 at 3:19 PM
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The Sacrifice of Isaac https://clevelandart.org/art/1952.235.1
This series of paintings primarily tells the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac, and each of the canvases depicts the interaction of humans and angels. In three works, angels appear to Abraham, and in one particularly dramatic canvas, an angel intercepts Abraham before he sacrifices his own son. However, the narrative of Tobias and the angel comes from an entirely different book of the Bible. The blind Tobit sends his son Tobias off to collect a sum of money in the distant town of Media, with the angel Raphael accompanying him in disguise as a human. This particular work depicts Raphael overseeing Tobias catching a fish, which would later be used to cure his father's blindness. Though the depiction the stories seems incongruous, the sacrifice of Isaac and Tobias and the angels were popular in Italian art between the 1400s and 1600s and both treat fathers and sons as well as obedience inspired by faith.
December 10, 2025 at 10:57 AM
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Figure from a Crèche: Group of Four Sheep https://clevelandart.org/art/1972.368.20
The practice of creating scenes of the Nativity for the home dates from the early 1700s in Italy, where people began to set up doll-like figures of about a foot or less in height. The custom was particularly popular in Naples around 1800, where crèche scenes (crèche means cradle, or crib) included many figures, whose heads and hands of painted terracotta, stuffed cloth bodies, and clothing adapted from contemporary local costumes gave them an amazingly realistic character. Representations of the birth of Jesus can be traced to the first few centuries of Christianity. Both living creatures and sculptural depictions of them were used from early times. By the late middle ages it was customary to create life-size figures of wood or stone, naturalistically painted, to represent the characters who participated in the events of Jesus's early life. These sculptures were then arranged in scenes illustrating one or both of the most important of these events, the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Adoration of the Magi-the three kings from the East who came to pay homage to the Christ child. Used in churches, these large figures were especially popular in Italy, Central Europe, Spain, and Portugal. This Object in Focus presentation was organized by Henry Hawley, Curator of Renaissance and Later Decorative Arts and Sculpture.
December 10, 2025 at 9:38 AM
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Venus https://clevelandart.org/art/1950.578
Venus
December 9, 2025 at 7:38 PM
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Diva Julia (obverse) Dubia Fortuna (reverse) https://clevelandart.org/art/1971.139
Diva Julia (obverse) Dubia Fortuna (reverse)
December 9, 2025 at 4:08 PM