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Reframing GEORG PENCZ, Portrait of Christina Schweitzer, 1547, Minneapolis Institute of Art
Posted: 04 Jun 2025 by PML
The true identity of this young woman has only recently been established; she is almost certainly Christina Schweitzer of Nuremberg, and her assured and self-contained likeness is one half of a pair of marriage portraits, both painted in 1547 ...
Reframing CÉZANNE, Portrait of Antony Valabrègue, 1869–1871, The Getty Museum
Posted: 09 Apr 2025 by PML
The poet and art critic Antony Valabrègue was, like Cézanne, born in Aix-en-Provence and grew up alongside the painter (although he was five years younger). He sat for him in his twenties, the most notable early portrait pre-dating this one by three or four years, and bursting into the presence of the Paris Salon admissions jury with what must have been an extreme case of the shock of the new.
Reframing VAN GOGH, The bedroom, 1889, Art Institute of Chicago
Posted: 29 Jan 2025 by PML
Van Gogh painted this dynamic view of his bedroom in the Yellow House at Arles three times, this one being the second version.
Reframing GABRIËL METSU, Lucia Wijbrants, 1667, Minneapolis Institute of Art
Posted: 04 Dec 2024 by PML
This portrait - although the sitter’s identity was only recently discovered - turns out to have descended in her family for two hundred years, almost certainly retaining its original frame, until it was sold to a member of the Rothschild family in 1865.
Reframing JACOB HUYSMANS, 1st Earl of Lichfield & his wife as children, 1674, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Posted: 09 Oct 2024 by PML
In 2012 this striking double portrait of a future husband and wife by the Flemish-born artist, Jacob Huysmans, was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne ...
Reframing ZURBARÁN, The Battle between Christians & Moors at El Sotillo, Metropolitan Museum, New York
Posted: 10 Jun 2024 by PML
The large arched painting of the Battle between Christians and Moors at El Sotillo in the Met Museum was only one part of an immense altarpiece, about 15 metres high, painted by Zurbarán in 1637-39 for a Carthusian monastery near Cádiz ...
Reframing JUAN DE VALDÉS LEAL The Conversion and Baptism of St. Augustine by St. Ambrose, Saint Louis Art Museum
Posted: 22 Feb 2024 by PML
The project to reframe this painting by one of the great 17th century Spanish masters was very exciting, since it required the design to incorporate a sense of the piety, symbolism and Catholic splendour of the original setting. This is one panel from a set of seven canvases which surrounded an altarpiece of the Madonna and Child by Murillo in the private oratory of the Archbishop of Seville, in southern Spain ...
Reframing GHIRLANDAIO Madonna & Child
Posted: 28 Nov 2023 by PML
The National Gallery possesses a particularly tender and moving painting of the Madonna and Child by Ghirlandaio. It has a curved, segmental top, and an integral painted trompe l’oeil border giving the effect of the inside of the arched niche in which the two figures stand, which has made it difficult to frame – even in an arched version of a conventional frame ...
Reframing VAN GOGH, Madam Roulin rocking the cradle (La Berceuse), Art Institute of Chicago
Posted: 14 Sep 2023 by PML
Van Gogh painted Madame Roulin, the wife of his friend Joseph Roulin, a postman in Arles, as a kind of secular Madonna - a symbol of family love and security. He even presented it to Gauguin after their destructive breach, asking that it should be hung as part of a triptych, between two paintings of sunflowers ...
Reframing FRANZ ANTON MAULBERTSCH (attributed), study for The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Cleveland Museum of Art
Posted: 04 May 2023 by PML
Franz Maulbertsch (1724-96) was a Viennese artist whose work was sought after for castles and churches across the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He had been particularly influenced by Venetian Rococo painting, and his wall, ceiling and easel paintings are all infused with the airy lightness of Tiepolo and Piazzetta ...
