A young man sits at a chessboard, chin in hand, staring at the pieces as if the floor had just dropped away beneath him. Across the table his opponent leans back, calm and amused. It is the Devil, and the stake is the young man's soul. Behind the player stands an angel, silent and sorrowful. Moritz Retzsch's The Chess Players (c. 1831) is a small panel that has had an unusually long afterlife, first as a popular engraving and later as the painting everyone calls "Checkmate". Quick facts Artist: Friedrich August Moritz Retzsch (1779–1857) Date: c. 1831 Medium: Oil on panel, about 32 x 39 cm Collection: Private collection (sold at Christie's in 1999) Notable fact: Also known as "Checkmate" or Die Schachspieler ; it circulated widely as a print and became the subject of a famous chess legend Moritz Retzsch, The Chess Players, c. 1831. Oil on panel. Private collection. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. The Painter of Faust Retzsch spent h...

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. 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, and chosen for the back of the Bank of England £20 note in 2020 J.M.W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839. Oil on canvas. The National Gallery, London. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. A Ship That Fought at Trafalgar HMS Temeraire was a 98-gun ship of the line. At Trafalgar in 1805 she sailed into action directly behind Nelson's flagship, Victory...

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 had mar...

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 Qu...

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) Joseph Mallord William Turner, Mortlake Terrace, 1827. Oil on canvas. Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Accession 1937.1.109. Open Access / Public Domain. Print available from the Sapiens Verbum shop. What Is at Stake Most people scroll past a “pretty Thames sunset” in three second...

There is only one rule that will save your life: do not look back. In Genesis, angels pull Lot and his family out of Sodom before fire falls from the sky; the cities of the plain are erased in a single divine storm. Lot's wife turns anyway. The text gives her no name and almost no psychology - only the consequence. She becomes a pillar of salt. In 1852, the English painter John Martin made that instant into an apocalypse so large that the woman herself nearly disappears inside it: a ribbon of scarlet cloud, a city already melting, and, if you know where to look, one small human mistake at the edge of the world. Quick facts Artist: John Martin (1789-1854) Date: 1852 Medium: Oil on canvas, 136.3 x 212.3 cm Collection: Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (TWCMS: C6975) Notable fact: Martin showed the picture at the Royal Academy in 1852; Victorian viewers already knew him as the painter who made private drawing rooms feel too small for the end of the world John Martin,...

A young woman hangs in the upper center of the canvas between an upward-gazing angel and a persuasive Satan below. Scales, blessed souls, and a thrash of the damned fill the rest of the air. In Octave Tassaert's Heaven and Hell (1850), moral choice is not private. It is a public spectacle with an audience of angels and demons. Quick facts Artist: Octave Tassaert (1800-1874) Date: 1850 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Cleveland Museum of Art (1980.287) Notable fact: Painted amid mid-century French political turmoil; the central woman has been read as France choosing between ideals Octave Tassaert, Heaven and Hell, c. 1850. Oil on fabric. Source: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Accession 1980.287. Open Access / Public Domain. Print available from the Sapiens Verbum shop. Composition as Verdict Tassaert places the woman where your eye must travel: heaven above, hell beneath, decision in between. The angel reads hope; Satan smiles invitation. Saint Michael's s...

Three witches haul a naked body through the night air while a man below covers his ears - or tries not to hear the spell. Francisco de Goya's Witches' Flight (1797-1798) - Vuelo de Brujas - belongs to a set of witchcraft pictures in which superstition, fear, and satire share the same dark sky. Magic here is not costume glamour; it is a social nightmare with lift. Quick facts Artist: Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) Date: 1797-1798 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Museo del Prado, Madrid Notable fact: Part of a group of six witchcraft-themed works; Goya mixes Enlightenment scorn with images that still feel sincerely terrifying Francisco de Goya, Witches' Flight (Vuelo de Brujas) , 1797-1798. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Enlightenment Light, Midnight Subject Late eighteenth-century Spain was full of arguments about reason and superstition. Goya paints witches who look absurd and dangerous at once. Pointed hats, ritual gestures, and a levitated victim could be moc...

A pyramid of bodies rises from a timber raft toward a speck on the horizon. Some are already corpses; one man waves a cloth as if hope itself had a muscle. Theodore Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819) turns a political scandal into Romantic history painting - shipwreck, incompetence, and survival staged life-size so you cannot look away politely. Quick facts Artist: Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) Date: 1818-1819 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Musee du Louvre, Paris Notable fact: Based on the 1816 wreck of the French frigate Meduse; Gericault interviewed survivors and built a scale model of the raft; shown at the 1819 Paris Salon Theodore Gericault, The Raft of the Medusa , 1818-1819. Musee du Louvre, Paris. Scandal Before It Was Art In June 1816 the Meduse ran aground off West Africa under a poorly chosen captain. Officers took the boats; roughly 150 people were left on a makeshift raft. Most died. Survivors' accounts shamed the restored Bourbon ...

Wide white eyes. A naked giant stuffs a limp, bloody torso into his mouth while his hands dig into the back like meat hooks. In Francisco de Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son (c. 1819-1823), myth is not politely retold. It is chewed in the dark. Quick facts Artist: Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) Date: c. 1819-1823 Medium: Oil mural transferred to canvas Collection: Museo del Prado, Madrid Notable fact: One of the Black Paintings from Quinta del Sordo; moved to canvas in 1874 and now at the Prado Francisco de Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son , c. 1819-1823. Oil mural transferred to canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From House Wall to Museum Horror The image began as a mural in Quinta del Sordo, the house Goya bought outside Madrid in 1819. Together with the other Black Paintings, it was transferred to canvas in 1874 and later entered the Prado. The private wall became public nightmare: thick paint, stark light, and a body that reads less like a child than an indistinct, ...

The emperor is dying in brown shadow. His son stands in a blaze of red. Around the bed, Stoic friends in black look like a funeral already underway. In Eugene Delacroix's Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (1844), philosophy meets succession - and the colour tells you who will inherit the room. Quick facts Artist: Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) Date: 1844 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lyon Notable fact: Shown in 1845 to harsh reviews; Baudelaire later called it "beautiful, huge, sublime, misunderstood" Eugene Delacroix, Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius , 1844. Oil on canvas. Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lyon. Red Against Black Delacroix had returned from North Africa obsessed with saturated colour. Here that lesson becomes politics. Commodus, haughty in crimson, draws the eye away from the failing emperor who grips his arm. The philosophers in dark cloth register grief; the heir registers appetite. Stoicism is present as at...