Renaissance artists transformed the course of western art history by making the nude central to their art. Drawing inspiration from classical sculpture and the study of the live model, these artists ...

Among their rigorous preparations for eternity, ancient Egyptians developed an intricate set of religious writings to help the deceased achieve a blessed afterlife in union with the solar god Re and ...

Mighty deities, brave heroes, and fantastic beings adorn the terracotta vessels of the ancient Greeks in the Mediterranean, the Maya in central America, and the Moche of northern Peru. This exhibition ...

Ancient Iran, historically known as Persia, was the dominant nation of western Asia for over a millennium (about 550 BC–AD 650), with three native dynasties controlling an empire of unprecedented size ...

Celebrated for her brilliance during a time when women sculptors were rare, Camille Claudel (1864–1943) was among the most daring and visionary artists of the late 19th century. Although she is ...

Paolo Veneziano led the premier painter’s workshop in late medieval Venice, producing work ranging from large complex altarpieces to small paintings intended for personal devotion. This focused ...

If Walter Gropius’s 1919 manifesto had proposed a radical vision for a new institution that would erode distinctions between artists and artisans, it was the school’s unprecedented pedagogy, ...

Manuscripts known as “books of hours” were among the most widely produced and used during the Middle Ages. These decorated prayer books not only structured time for their readers (over a day, a year, ...

Blue paper has been a popular artist material since the fifteenth century. Crafted from blue rags formed into sheets, this humble material that required expert knowledge to produce and had a profound ...

Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems met in Harlem in 1976 when both were twenty-three years old. For more than 45 years, the two photographers have maintained a friendship and artistic dialogue that ...

Assyrian kings in the ninth to seventh centuries BC decorated their palaces with masterful relief sculptures that represent a high point of Mesopotamian art, both for their artistic quality and ...

The 16 th-century German artist Hans Holbein the Younger created portraits for a wide range of patrons, including scholars, statesmen, and courtiers, in Switzerland and England. Holbein’s drawings and ...