Collectit ! by Spectandum Figurative Paintings

« The Roof of Folly: An Allegory of the Fall » This enigmatic 17th-century painting, laden with symbolic content, echoes the allegorical tradition of Hieronymus Bosch, fusing grotes...

This evocative three-quarter length portrait, executed in the Venetian School during the 17th century, depicts an imagined figure of an elite Ottoman woman, rendered in rich oils on ...

Zacharie Noterman or Zacharie Notermann or Zacharias Noterman, Ghent 1820 and Paris 1890, is a Belgian painter and engraver, specializing in the painting of antics, scenes of monkeys...

We know very little about the Mechelen landscape painter Karel De San. He appears to have been mainly active during the period 1829-1848. The painterly landscape with the dramatic sk...

This charming bucolic landscape bathes in a soft yellow light. A lady on horseback, accompanied by a boy on a donkey, stops near a shepherd. The herd looks at two fishers and quietly...

Allegorical Scene of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806) Attributed to Léon Cogniet (1794–1880) This ambitious and romanticized composition captures a defining moment in Amer...

From the 16th to 19th C the production of decorative arts continued to flourish with the introduction of both rococo and baroque elements signaling an increasingly open attitude to a...

Pieter Plas placed himself with this pastoral scene in the tradition of the 17th-century painters and draughtsmen such as Nicolaes Pietersz Berchem, Karel du Jardin, Marcus de Bye an...

The 39-year-old gentleman had himself portrayed as an aristocrat in an idyllic landscape. At the time, parks and forests were environments associated with the lands and pastimes of t...

The Namur painter and engraver, Louis Decoeur (1884-1960) became a member of “L’Effort” around 1910. This artist’s association provided a free studio for painters in Brussels, on the...

Attentive observer, may I challenge you to find some unusual elements in this panel painting? One detail has to do with the symbolic use of color, the other with a later adjustment of the image. Indeed! The Blessed Virgin is not dressed in her usual sky blue cloak, which refers to her purity, but in a red robe. During the Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the Virgin often wore such a red garment to refer to the Passion of Christ. After all, the blessing Christ child with his orb would shed his blood for the redemption of mankind. The second strange element catches the eye when one looks closer at the little Jesus. It appears that he was originally depicted completely naked, but got on a transparent loincloth over time. In the past there were several times when nudity in art was subject to some form of censorship. For example, the supervision of Christian art was strongly encouraged by the Council of Trent (1545-1563). This assembly was dealing with the inner-ecclesiastical reform of the Roman Catholic Church. One of the important theologians who followed the council’s guidelines was Joannes Molanus (1533-1585). He did not consider the nakedness of the Christ Child to be edifying and pointed out that children could be endangered in this way. He may have been referring to the dangers of paedophilia. During the 19th century, puritanism emerged. A famous example of a moral preacher was Pope Pius IX...

As the Dutch painter Philips Wouwerman often did, this artist painted travellers stopping at an inn or a farm. One of the men got off his horse to urinate against the facade of the building. The motif of a peeing man was far from an exception in Dutch genre paintings...

Around the middle of the 19th century, the missionary Thomas Savage and the anatomist Jeffries Wyman, described a new animal species – the Troglodytes Gorilla – in their article for ...

Willem Muys was a Dutch, 18th-century painter of history pieces, portraits and cabinet pieces. Above all, he appears to have been active as a painter of ‘wallpaper’. Until the mid-18th century, ‘wallpaper’ was not painted on paper but on coarsely woven linen. Wealthy citizens had their mansions or country estates adorned with ‘wallpaper’ with landscapes, exotic birds or chinoiseries. Willem Muys mainly painted ‘wallpaper’, which means that few of his works have been preserved. They are hardly represented in public collections. The works of his sons, Nicolaas en Robbert, both painters, are a little less rare. The painting with Rebecca and Eliezer...

Around the middle of the 19th century, the missionary Thomas Savage and the anatomist Jeffries Wyman described a new animal species – the Troglodytes Gorilla – in their Boston Societ...

Sir Joshua Reynolds (16 July 1723 - 23 February 1792) was a leading 18th-century English portrait painter and President of the Royal Academy from 1769 to 1792. He was born on 16 July...

After Athena was born fully armed from Zeus' forehead, Triton, acting as a foster parent to the goddess, raised her alongside his daughter, Pallas. The sea god taught both girls the ...

Preparation for Carnival: a three day festival of insatiable eating, drinking and carousing that preceded the forty days of Lent, a period of penitence when the pious drank only wate...