Provenance

Private Collection, England

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Georges François Blondel, View of a Prison, c. 1765, mezzotint on laid paper, Paul Mellon Fund, 2001.118.2

View of a Prison

Georges François Blondel · c. 1765 · mezzotint on laid paper ·  Accession ID  2001.118.2

Georges François Blondel, A View of the Inside of the New Prison at Rome, c. 1765, mezzotint on laid paper, Paul Mellon Fund, 2001.118.1

A View of the Inside of the New Prison at Rome

Georges François Blondel · c. 1765 · mezzotint on laid paper ·  Accession ID  2001.118.1

John Boydell, James Watson, The Female Correspondent, 1771, mezzotint on laid paper, Paul Mellon Fund, 2001.118.72

The Female Correspondent

John Boydell, James Watson · 1771 · mezzotint on laid paper ·  Accession ID  2001.118.72

Rembrandt van Rijn, Abraham Entertaining the Angels [recto], 1656, etched copper plate with drypoint, Gift of Ladislaus and Beatrix von Hoffmann and Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1997.85.1.a

Abraham Entertaining the Angels [recto]

Rembrandt van Rijn · 1656 · etched copper plate with drypoint ·  Accession ID  1997.85.1.a

From our place on a dirt road, a row of buildings and houses extends from the right edge of this painting, into the distance and to our left in this vertical composition. People, all with light skin, come and go through doorways and hatches, work unloading goods next to a horse, and gather under a tattered awning down the road. Most of the people wear hats and dark clothing in tones of brown, black, and golden yellow, with a few touches of brick red. A jumble of objects, including a barrel, a wooden trap, and a ceramic vessel, and some chickens are gathered in the lower right corner of the panel, closest to us. A boy holding a long-necked vessel stands at an open hatch leading to an underground level of the structure nearby. That building has a large, steeply pitched, thatched dormer on a red tile roof. Green vines grow over parts of the peanut-brown stone and brick façade. A white stork with long legs and a long beak stands at a nest built on top of the chimney. A sign hangs above an open door, through which a person leans, and a birdcage hangs below the sign. In front of the open door, two men, one wearing a golden yellow vest and one wearing teal blue, unload large wooden barrels from a horse-drawn sled. The brown horse lifts one back foot off the ground, and the side of his hide is marked, perhaps with a sore. A tall tree with dark green leaves separates the building closest to us from its neighbor. A group of people and children are gathered under an awning there. One boy in the group pets a white, long-haired dog. Nearby, a man using crutches makes his way down the road toward us. A pair of dogs, one black and one brown and white, tussle over something in the lower left corner. The row of buildings extends in a line into the distance with steeply pitched, pointed rooflines. A tower, perhaps for a church, appears in the hazy distance to our left, near the left edge of the panel. Clouds with pale peach tops and lilac-gray undersides sweep across the sky above, parting to reveal on a couple slivers of blue sky beyond. The artist signed and dated the panel with black paint in the lower right corner: “Isack van Ostade 1645.”
Isack van Ostade, Workmen before an Inn, 1645, oil on panel, Gift of Richard A. and Lee G. Kirstein, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1991.64.1

Workmen before an Inn

Isack van Ostade · 1645 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1991.64.1

Gustave Doré, An Alpine Valley with Trees and Boulders, 1876, watercolor, gouache and black chalk, with pen and black ink, over traces of graphite on wove paper, Gift of Helen Porter and James T. Dyke, 2003.144.1

An Alpine Valley with Trees and Boulders

Gustave Doré · 1876 · watercolor, gouache and black chalk, with pen and black ink, over traces of graphite on wove paper ·  Accession ID  2003.144.1

Umbrian 16th Century, Head of a Woman, c. 1510/1520, oil on poplar panel, Timken Collection, 1960.6.24

Head of a Woman

Umbrian 16th Century · c. 1510/1520 · oil on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1960.6.24

Baldassare Franceschini, Self-Portrait, 1640s, red chalk on laid paper, Gift of Jak Katalan in honor of Jonathan Bober, 2020.151.1

Self-Portrait

Baldassare Franceschini · 1640s · red chalk on laid paper ·  Accession ID  2020.151.1

Four men and one woman gather around a dead man who is dressed in a bright honey-gold cape and pointed hat, his stone-gray face resting on a stump or column in this dark vertical painting. All the people have peachy skin or light skin tinged with green. Shown from the knees up, Saint Gennaro, the dead man, twists and slumps to our right. On the stump, his eyes are closed and his lips parted. His hands are crossed at his waist and bound with rope. He wears a tall hat rising to a peak in the center. His cloak drapes over a white tunic, and red seeps from around his neck. On our right, a brown-haired woman is shown from the waist up, bending down in front of Saint Gennaro’s face. The light falls across the scene from our right, so her profile is in shadow. She holds a silver chalice in one hand and squeezes something, perhaps a rag or sponge, over the chalice with her other hand. A clean-shaven man with dark curly hair stands behind the stump. That man’s body faces us as he leans to our right and tilts his head down over Saint Gennaro, his shadowed face obscured. His left hand is under the dead man’s head and his right hand clutches his own chest. Behind the dead man and to our left, a bald, gray bearded man bends over and spreads his arms wide over and across the saint’s back. His brow is furrowed, and he looks at Saint Gennaro with deep-set eyes. Along the left edge of the canvas, a bald man with a hooked nose and large ears stands and angles his body to our right, his face in profile. He leans back from the dead man, his right hand holding a knife or sword with a bird-shaped hilt. The fourth man close to Saint Gennaro looks on to our right, from behind the stooping woman. The people gathered around Saint Gennaro wear clothes in muted shades of gray, brown, and white. The edge of a building rises up along the left edge of the composition. In front of a distant mountain to our right, more people are gathered, some with swords raised and others looking on with mouths gaping. One faint head, the face painted in tones of ash gray, peeks over the shoulder of the fourth man. Yellow streaks near the horizon also illuminate the undersides of heavy, dark gray clouds above.
Mattia Preti, The Martyrdom of Saint Gennaro, c. 1685, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2000.75.1

The Martyrdom of Saint Gennaro

Mattia Preti · c. 1685 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2000.75.1

This is a painting of multiple people and horses in a tumultuous setting. There are armored men on horseback interacting with a man in the center who seems have fallen off a horse and on to the ground. The scene conveys movement and action, with contorted forms of both humans and animals. One horse rears into the air, while another leans forward with its back legs raised. At the top of the painting, a person with long hair emerges from the clouds. Rays of white light shine down from the opening in the clouds on to the people and horses.
Abraham van Diepenbeeck, Sir Peter Paul Rubens, The Conversion of Saint Paul, 1640s, pen and ink and oil paint over black chalk on brown paper, laid down on canvas, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, 1999.25.1

The Conversion of Saint Paul

Abraham van Diepenbeeck, Sir Peter Paul Rubens · 1640s · pen and ink and oil paint over black chalk on brown paper, laid down on canvas ·  Accession ID  1999.25.1