Sapiens Verbum — Art History Explained

Giuseppe Arcimboldo spent three decades painting portraits that fall apart the moment you look closely. A cheek is a peach. An eyebrow is a pea pod. A beard is a tangle of roots and chestnuts. Step back and it's a bishop, an emperor, a season of the year. Step in and it's a very strange still life. His patrons were Holy Roman Emperors, and they didn't just tolerate the joke — they commissioned more of it. Six of his paintings, below, still do exactly what they did in the 1560s: convince you they're one thing, then make you look twice. Quick facts Artist: Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526–1593) Theme: Human faces built entirely from fruit, vegetables, flowers, fire, and roots Paintings in this guide: Spring , Summer , Fire , Vertumnus (1591), Four Seasons in One Head (c. 1590), Self-Portrait Drawing (c. 1587) Notable fact: He was the official court portraitist to three Holy Roman Emperors in Milan, Vienna, and Prague — the produce was diplomacy, not comedy ...

For most of the twentieth century, this painting fooled everyone twice over. First, experts believed it showed Rembrandt's own brother. Then they believed Rembrandt himself had painted it. Neither claim survived the century intact. Quick facts Artist: Circle of Rembrandt (formerly attributed to Rembrandt van Rijn) Date: c. 1650 Medium: Oil on canvas (67.5 x 50.7 cm) Collection: Gemaldegalerie, Berlin Notable fact: Bought in 1897 as a newly discovered Rembrandt; the attribution was formally withdrawn in 1986 after a multi-year technical investigation Circle of Rembrandt, The Man with the Golden Helmet, c. 1650. Oil on canvas. Gemaldegalerie, Berlin. Public domain. A Face Swallowed by Shadow An old soldier sits half-turned from us, his features almost lost in darkness. What the light picks out instead is the helmet: an extravagant, fantastical thing bristling with earpieces, a feathered plume, and medallions hammered into the gold, each catching a different angle of the same l...

A knight's helmet dangles loose in one hand. His armor presses against a woman's vivid blue dress as they meet -- for the last time, though neither says so -- on a narrow stone stairwell. She holds him with both arms; his sword stays sheathed at his side, and he is already half-turned toward whatever is waiting below. Frederic William Burton's The Meeting on the Turret Stairs (1864) is only a watercolour, barely larger than a cafe tabletop, and yet the National Gallery of Ireland has had to build a queuing system around it. Quick facts Artist: Frederic William Burton (1816-1900) Date: 1864 Medium: Watercolour and gouache on paper, 95.5 x 60.8 cm Collection: National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin Notable fact: Voted Ireland's favourite painting in a 2012 public poll; now shown only two hours a week to protect its pigments from light damage Frederic William Burton, Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs, 1864. Watercolour and gouache on paper. Nationa...

There are no faces to speak of — just a jaw in profile, a cheek pressed shut, a pair of closed eyes. Gustav Klimt buries almost everything else under a wall of gold: hard black-and-white rectangles wrapping him, soft spirals of flowers wrapping her, the two figures fused into a single glowing shape kneeling at the edge of a flower-strewn cliff. Painted in Vienna between 1907 and 1908, Der Kuss (The Kiss) is the image most people picture the instant they hear the word "Klimt" — and more than a century later, historians still can't say for certain who is actually being kissed. Quick facts Artist: Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) Date: 1907–1908 Medium: Oil, gold and silver leaf on canvas, 180 × 180 cm Collection: Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna Notable fact: Bought by the Austrian state before Klimt had even finished painting it Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (Der Kuss), 1907–1908. Oil, gold and silver leaf on canvas. Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna. Public domain....

In February 1814, with Napoleon's armies retreating and a king about to reclaim his throne, Spain's provisional government asked an aging court painter to immortalize the day ordinary Madrileños first said no to an empire. Francisco de Goya delivered one of the most devastating images of war ever painted. Then the government whose victory it was supposed to celebrate put it in storage — and left it there for most of the century. Quick facts Artist: Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) Date: 1814 Medium: Oil on canvas (268 × 347 cm) Collection: Museo del Prado, Madrid Notable fact: Commissioned by Spain's provisional government to honor the 1808 uprising against Napoleon — then kept out of public view for roughly three decades, uncatalogued by the Prado until 1872. Francisco de Goya, The Third of May 1808 , 1814. Oil on canvas, 268 × 347 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Madrid Says No On May 2, 1808, Madrid rioted. Napoleon ...

Francisco de Goya had painted for kings. Then he bought a house outside Madrid, went deaf to the court, and covered the walls with images he never meant for a salon. The Quinta del Sordo — the House of the Deaf Man — is where the Black Paintings begin: Saturn in the dining room, a witches’ sabbath in the gloom, and a painter who stopped decorating power and started painting what power left behind. Quick facts Artist: Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) Theme: The Quinta del Sordo and the Black Paintings Key works in this guide: Saturn Devouring His Son (c. 1820–23); Witches’ Sabbath / related witch scenes; earlier Witches’ Flight (1798) Collection today: Museo del Prado, Madrid (transferred from the house walls) Notable fact: Painted in oil directly on the plaster of his own home, then later transferred to canvas Francisco de Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son (c. 1820–23). Museo del Prado, Madrid — once on the walls of the Q...

Look once for the black dog on the wall. Look again for the sun that is trying to erase the river. If you only know J.M.W. Turner from storms and wrecks, Mortlake Terrace (1827) is where you meet the other Turner: the one who treats light as the main character and everything else as its supporting cast. Quick facts Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) Date: 1827 Medium: Oil on canvas (92.1 × 122.2 cm) Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Andrew W. Mellon Collection) Notable fact: Painted for William Moffatt at The Limes, Mortlake; evening companion to the Frick Collection’s Mortlake Terrace: Early Summer Morning (1826) J.M.W. Turner, Mortlake Terrace , 1827. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. What Is at Stake Most people scroll past a “pretty Thames sunset” in three seconds. That is the trap. If you leave this painting as decoration, you miss the argument Turner is making: a view can ...