The picture is unfinished & misleadingly restored in part. Piazzetta treated the Sacrifice of Isaac in a number of compositions; this one was intended for an altarpiece. A date of about 1735 has been suggested for the painting but it may be of a few yea ...

The sibyl was an oracle of Apollo from the Greek island of Samos who prophesied that Jesus would be born of a virgin, as the inscription on the scroll indicates: ‘ Hail Zion, chaste maiden who has much suffered’. The frame was designed by James ‘ Athenian’ Stuart for Spencer House in London. ...

The painting was one of those, engraved by Le Bas, included in the publication of Watteau's work which the artist's friend & patron Jean de Julienne published in 1736. It appeared there with the title ' La Gamme d' Amour'. Drawings for the figure of the girl survive & are in the British Museum. The main focus of the composition lies in the relationship of the guitar player in his brightly coloured theatrical costume & the girl seated at his feet. The design enhances this relationship, with the diagonal separating the figures crossed by another extending from the feet of the girl to the top of the guitar, guitar & music book overlapping in the centre. A marble bust of a bearded philosopher appears above the musician, turned to the right where secondary figures, engaged in their own pursuits, pay no attention to the two main actors. ...

Create your own bespoke print of The Sea near Palavas from our collection. About this painting The Sea near Palavas, 1860s onwards © The National Gallery, London This painting joined our collection in 1911 With our custom print service, you can order your own fully customised reproduction from the National Gallery Collection & exhibitions. Choose your own size, print material & frames & have your masterpiece delivered straight to your door. ...

During the 1830s, Corot often painted small-scale panoramic vistas of the countryside as he travelled around France. In such works he sought to capture the tonality of the landscape & the effects of sunlight on natural forms. The view in the present painting is of the Seine from Rouen in north-western France. Corot painted this from the top of the Tour du Gros Horloge in the centre of Rouen on one of his three trips to Normandy in 1829, 1830 & 1833. He looks to the west & the Ile Rollet, just visible on the left. ...

The National Gallery possesses an outstanding collection of French seventeenth-century paintings, in part a reflection of the enthusiasm with which British collectors once acquired the works of Poussin & Claude. Many of the greatest works of these two French masters are in the Gallery; some, such as Claude's Enchanted Castle & Poussin's Triumph of Pan, acquired since the publication in 1957 of The French School by Martin Davies. In this new catalogue, Dr Wine takes a fresh look at these masterpieces, together with the work of artists such as Laurent de La Hyre, Philippe de Champaigne, Valentin de Boulogne & the Le Nain Brothers. Important paintings such as Champaigne's full-length Cardinal Richelieu, La Hyre's Allegorical Figure of Grammar & Eustache Le Sueur’s Alexander & his Doctor are discussed in full. New research & information based on re-examination of each picture are combined with full-page colour illustrations, including details, technical photographs & comparative illustrations. This catalogue provides both an invaluable reference for studying seventeenth-century French painting, & a closer look at some of the most beautiful paintings in the Gallery's Collection. HUMPHREY WINE was the Curator of French Seventeenth
- & Eighteenth-Century Paintings at the National Gallery, London, until 2016. His publications include Claude: The Poetic Landscape (1994) & The Eighteenth-Century French Paintings (2018) in the National Gallery Catalogues series. Reviews ‘ Humphrey Wine’s catalogue …should stand as an example to be followed by other museums’ Pierre Rosenberg, Burlington Magazine
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Create your own bespoke print of Jacob van Ruisdael’s The Shore at Egmond-aan-Zee from our collection. About this painting The Shore at Egmond-aan-Zee, about 1675 © The National Gallery, London This painting joined our collection in 1893 With our custom print service, you can order your own fully customised reproduction from the National Gallery Collection & exhibitions. Choose your own size, print material & frames & have your masterpiece delivered straight to your door. ...

On the dunes, right, are the village & church of Scheveningen, which lies on the North Sea coast, about three miles from The Hague. The late 15th-century church still stands. The coach on the shore has the arms of Amsterdam on the back. A number of smal ...

Create your own bespoke print of William Hogarth’s The Shrimp Girl from our collection. About this painting The Shrimp Girl, about 1740-5 © The National Gallery, London This painting joined our collection in 1884 With our custom print service, you can order your own fully customised reproduction from the National Gallery Collection & exhibitions. Choose your own size, print material & frames & have your masterpiece delivered straight to your door. ...

Raphael's ' Sistine Madonna' (about 1512-14) was painted as an altarpiece for the church of S. Sisto, Piacenza. It is now in the Gemaldegalerie in Dresden. This is a tracing, apparently made in 1822, by Jakob Schlesinger from Raphael's altarpiece in Dresde ...