There is a spelling mistake on this print. Dürer engraved MELENCOLIA — with an “e” where an “a” belongs. Nobody knows whether it was an error or a device. Scholars have tried reading it as an anagram and as a cipher; one hypothesis holds that the “I” is not a numeral at all but a…
A painting about birth and hope was the last thing Van Gogh made before the worst collapse of his time at Saint-Rémy. He finished it in February 1890. Within days he went into a crisis that lasted close to two months, during which he could neither paint nor write letters. When he recovered in April,…
Hidden inside one of the most studied paintings in Western art history, a tiny convex mirror reflects two figures standing in a doorway – one of whom may be the artist himself, silently witnessing the scene he painted. The Arnolfini Portrait, completed in 1434, is packed with so many layers of meaning, technical wizardry, and…
Most people recognize The Scream instantly — but almost nobody knows that Edvard Munch was inspired to paint it after watching the sky turn blood-red during a real evening walk, an effect often attributed to the atmospheric fallout from the catastrophic 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. Quick Facts Artist: Edvard Munch Year: 1893 Medium: Oil, tempera,…