The stories behind the paintings

In a dark grotto of jagged rock, a young woman kneels with one hand on the shoulder of a small boy and the other held open above a second child. An angel in a red cloak points across the scene, water glints in the distance, and wild flowers grow out of the stone. The Virgin of the Rocks is one of Leonardo da Vinci’s most mysterious paintings, and he painted it twice: the first version hangs in the Louvre in Paris, the second in the National Gallery in London. The picture below is our vintage poster of the Paris painting; a detail of the London version is shown further down. Vintage art poster by Sapiens Verbum after Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin of the Rocks , 1483–86 (Musée du Louvre, Paris). The painting is reproduced inside a decorative frame with the title. Available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get the vintage poster → License this image → Quick facts Artist: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) Title: The Virgin ...

A young mother sits on a bed in a quiet room and holds out a small red flower to her baby. He reaches for it with both hands, and their eyes meet. That is all that happens in The Madonna of the Pinks , a tiny panel no bigger than a book of hours, and it is enough. Painted around 1506–7 and attributed to Raphael, it is one of the most tender images of the Virgin and Child in Renaissance art, and one of the most debated. The picture below is our vintage poster of the painting; the original is shown further down. Vintage art poster by Sapiens Verbum after Raphael, The Madonna of the Pinks , about 1506–7 (National Gallery, London). The painting is reproduced unchanged inside a decorative frame with the title. Available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get the vintage poster → License this image → Quick facts Artist: Raphael (1483–1520), Italian painter and architect Title: The Madonna of the Pinks ( La Madonna dei Garofani ) ...

Christ’s body hangs in strips of linen as his friends strain to carry him up a stone stairway to the tomb. On the right, a large patch of bare panel waits for a figure that was never painted. Michelangelo began this Entombment in Rome in about 1500, at the age of twenty-five, and left it unfinished when he went home to Florence the following year. It is one of perhaps only three panel paintings by him that survive, and it now hangs in the National Gallery in London. The picture below is our vintage poster of the painting; the original is shown further down. Vintage art poster by Sapiens Verbum after Michelangelo, The Entombment , about 1500–01 (National Gallery, London). Available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get the vintage poster → License this image → Quick facts Artist: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), Italian painter, sculptor and architect Title: The Entombment (or Christ being carried to his Tomb) Date: abo...

Three kings have travelled from the ends of the earth. In a grand building that is already falling into ruin, Caspar kneels before the Virgin and offers the Christ Child a golden cup full of gold coins, while Melchior and Balthasar wait their turn with their courtiers. Around them crowd shepherds, an ox and a donkey, two dogs, and a choir of angels looking down through the broken roof. Jan Gossaert painted The Adoration of the Kings in about 1510–15, and it is one of the most spectacular Christmas pictures of the Northern Renaissance. The picture below is our vintage poster of the painting; the original is shown further down. Vintage art poster by Sapiens Verbum after Jan Gossaert, The Adoration of the Kings , 1510–15 (National Gallery, London). Available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get the vintage poster → License this image → Quick facts Artist: Jan Gossaert, also called Jean Gossart or Mabuse (active 1508, died 1532), Net...

A man and a woman stand side by side in a small room in Bruges. He raises his right hand; she rests her left hand on the folds of a vast green gown. Behind them, a round mirror on the back wall reflects the whole scene from behind, and two more figures standing in the doorway. Above the mirror, in elegant letters, the painter has written that he was there. The Arnolfini Portrait , painted by Jan van Eyck in 1434 and now in the National Gallery in London, is one of the most famous and most argued-about pictures in Western art. The picture below is our vintage poster version of the painting; the original is shown further down. Vintage art poster by Sapiens Verbum after Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait . Available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get the vintage poster → License this image → Quick facts Artist: Jan van Eyck (active 1422, died 1441) Date: 1434 (signed and dated) Medium: Oil on wood (probably oak), 82.2 × 60 cm Collection: The...

A ghostly warship, pale as bone, glides up the river behind a squat black tug belching smoke and fire. Beyond them the sun goes down in a blaze of orange and red. J.M.W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire (1839) shows a veteran of Trafalgar on its way to the breaker's yard, and it turns a routine piece of salvage into one of the great elegies in British painting. Vintage art poster by Sapiens Verbum after J.M.W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire , 1839 (National Gallery, London). Available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop. J.M.W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839. Oil on canvas. The National Gallery, London. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → Also as a vintage poster → Quick facts Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) Date: 1839 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: The National Gallery, London (Turner Bequest, 1856) Notable fact: Voted the greatest painting in a British collection in a 2005 BBC Radio 4 poll,...

A young woman lies on a bed of grey-blue satin, her back turned to us, her body a long curve of pale, luminous skin against the dark sheets. At the foot of the bed, a winged child kneels and holds up a mirror, and in it we see her face, or rather a blurred shadow of it, looking back at us. Diego Velázquez's The Toilet of Venus , better known as the Rokeby Venus , painted between 1647 and 1651 and now in the National Gallery in London, is the only female nude by the great Spanish painter to survive, and one of the most famous nudes in Western art. Diego Velázquez, The Toilet of Venus (The Rokeby Venus), 1647–51. Oil on canvas. National Gallery, London. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → Quick facts Artist: Diego Velázquez (1599–1660) Date: 1647–1651 Medium: Oil on canvas, 122.5 × 177 cm Collection: National Gallery, London (NG2057), presented by the Art Fund in 1906 Nickname: From Rokeby Park, County Durham, where it hung for much ...