Francesco Borromini (1599-1667) is often remembered for his professional relationship with Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), which grew more as they worked together on projects across Rome, such as New St. Peter’s Basilica and the Barberini Palace. Their long-lasting conflict, laden with contrasting artistic philosophies, has been elaborated into a saga enriched by local anecdotes, such as claiming that Bernini’s personification of the Río de la Plata on the Four River Fountain is protecting itself from the imminent collapse of the adjacent church of St. Agnes designed by Borromini.

Francesco Borromini’s Rome

This rivalry, however, has also cast a shadow over Borromini’s contribution to the re-designing of the city and his innovative approach to architectural design, which is often imbued with symbolic significance. Let’s explore Borromini’s life, some of his most remarkable designs, and his mastery of geometry as a tool to capture the essence of abstract concepts such as divine creation, wisdom, and harmony, translated into inventive architectural microcosms.

Born Francesco Castelli on September 25, 1599, in Bissone, a small village on Lake Lugano in modern-day Switzerland, Borromini came from a family of stonemasons, which laid the foundation for his career in architecture. After basic training in stonework, he moved to Milan, where he honed his craft and developed a strong foundation in architectural principles.

In 1619, he relocated to Rome to work under the guidance of Carlo Maderno, a relative of his and the chief architect of New St. Peter’s Basilica. Following Maderno’s death in 1629, Borromini briefly continued to work at the Fabric of St Peter’s alongside Gian Lorenzo Bernini until tensions between the two led him to abandon the project. Borromini set out to seek independent commissions where he could freely create architectural spaces based on his strong knowledge of traditions but simultaneously on his visionary approach to transforming those very rules in bold and unconventional ways.

While his contemporaries often employed grandiose ornamentation and lavish materials, Borromini’s designs focused on dynamic geometrical forms, fluid lines, and a profound interplay of light and shadow. One of Borromini’s signature techniques was the use of elliptical and curvilinear geometries for his floor plans, which created a sense of movement and energy in his structures. He also paid meticulous attention to the relationships between spaces, designing interiors that felt at once harmonious and dynamic.

San Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane (1638-1641)

San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, also known as San Carlino, marked Borromini’s first independent commission following his departure from St. Peter’s Basilica. Entrusted to him by the Trinitarian Order, this project proved serendipitous: Borromini was eager to demonstrate his creative prowess to potential commissioners, while the Trinitarians, new to the city themselves, needed a church to receive papal approval for their religious order but lacked the financial means for an elaborate structure. The modest budget did not prevent Borromini from utilizing his ingenuity to the fullest, resulting in a space that achieved monumental impact and structural complexity within the constraints of both limited funding and a cramped site.

The church’s design, indeed, is a testament to Borromini’s mastery of complex geometry. Alternating concave and convex forms, the undulating façade already suggests the rhythmic dynamism and intricacy that will be found inside, while the pure and light simplicity of the stucco interior décor is left as a pleasing surprise. The floor plan begins as an intricate interplay of interlocking ovals, triangles, and circles, creating a dynamic and seemingly disorientating foundation.

However, as one ascends toward the dome, the geometry gradually resolves into clearer, harmonious forms, symbolizing the soul’s journey toward the heavens. The elliptical dome, with its interlocking coffering and luminous apex, creates an ethereal sense of transcendence, drawing the viewer’s gaze heavenward and reinforcing the spiritual symbolism embedded in the architecture.

Sant’Ivo Alla Sapienza (1642-1660)

Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, located within the courtyard of La Sapienza, Rome’s oldest university, is another iconic work by Borromini. Commissioned by Urban VIII as the university’s chapel, it symbolizes the divine origin of knowledge and the pursuit of wisdom. As for San Carlino, Borromini’s design of Sant’Ivo succeeds in translating this abstract theme into geometrical forms and celestial symbolism.

The plan of Sant’Ivo is based on a complex yet harmonious configuration of triangles and circles, which interweave to form a star-shaped layout. This geometric intricacy serves as a metaphor for the pursuit of knowledge, an endeavor that begins with a fragmented understanding of reality but gradually resolves into clarity and enlightenment, as guided by divine inspiration. The interior’s interplay of light and shadow further enhances the sense of progressive divine enlightenment, with sunlight filtering through carefully positioned windows to highlight the chapel’s harmonious proportions.

The transition from the intricate floor plan to the luminous dome allows us to visualize and experience this intellectual and spiritual journey. The dome itself, crowned by a corkscrew-shaped lantern that spirals upward towards Heaven, symbolizes the ascent of the human mind towards divine wisdom. The lantern is, therefore, both a visual focal point where the whole structure culminates and a profound representation of enlightenment. It stands as a testament to Borromini’s belief that architecture could transcend its physical function to embody the higher aspirations of the human mind and soul.

Oratory of Saint Philip Neri (1637-1650)

Adjacent to the Chiesa Nuova in Rome, the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri is yet another powerful expression of Borromini’s ability to translate spiritual ideas into architectural form. Commissioned as a space for prayer and community gatherings, the Oratory embodies the values of the Congregation for which it was built—simplicity, humility, and devotion—while elevating them through an innovative design.

The façade achieves striking elegance through its gentle curving and rhythmic interplay of concave and convex forms and ornaments, some drawn from previous architectural traditions, whilst others invented anew. For instance, the curved gable, framed by pilasters and adorned with subtle ornamental details, invites contemplation and symbolizes the uplifting nature of prayer. The overall undulating design reflects Borromini’s belief in the power of architecture to inspire harmony and unity.

Inside, the Oratory’s spatial arrangement fosters an intimate and serene atmosphere. Borromini’s careful orchestration of proportions creates a sense of balance and cohesion, ensuring that every element contributes to the whole. At its core, the Oratory appears as a celebration of spiritual harmony. Borromini’s design once again transcends mere functionality, transforming the building into a space where architectural form and spiritual purpose converge.

Palazzo Spada (1643-1647)

One of Borromini’s most ingenious creations can be found in Palazzo Spada, where a forced-perspective gallery was added to the courtyard, proving the architect’s mastery of geometrical rules. At first glance, the colonnade seems to extend far into the distance, but this illusion is the product of Borromini’s brilliant manipulation of perception by means of accurate calculations and proportions. The gradual diminution of column sizes, the narrowing of the floor, and the ceiling’s calculated slope compress space in a way that deceives the eye into perceiving a much greater depth than the actual length of the gallery.

This work is more than a mere playful trick; it embodies Borromini’s ability to make a concept tangible. Perspective—an intellectual and mathematical principle—is translated into a physical and experiential reality. Visitors walking through the gallery are not merely observing an illusion; they are rather engaging with a crafted experience that transforms an idea into a tactile, inhabitable space. The forced-perspective gallery reflects Borromini’s ability in turning the theoretical into the concrete, making the intangible concept of infinite space a reality within the finite confines of a palace.

Francesco Borromini’s Personal Struggles and Tragic End

Despite his architectural achievements and innovative contributions, Borromini’s personal life was marked by inner turmoil. He was known for his intense and solitary nature, and his perfectionism and uncompromising standards sometimes alienated him from those he worked with. These factors, combined with his rivalry with Bernini and the uneven recognition of his work, deepened his sense of inadequacy. Borromini’s mental health further deteriorated in his later years until, on August 2, 1667, he tragically took his own life, leaving behind a legacy of brilliance tempered by personal suffering. His death marked the loss of one of the most innovative minds of early modern Rome.

Francesco Borromini was a visionary whose contributions to architecture transcended the boundaries of his time and re-invented knowledge to produce dynamic forms and profound symbolism. Despite the challenges he faced, Borromini redefined the possibilities of Baroque architecture, and his work remains a source of fascination and inspiration. The timeless elegance and complexity of his buildings epitomizes the Baroque aesthetic but also stands apart thanks to its originality and daring experimentation.

Theodore Gericault was an outstanding painter of the era on the verge of Romanticism and Realism. Gericault had a tragically short career, yet his rather small artistic oeuvre triggered a chain of developments in the history of art. Contrary to a dominant trend of painting historical scenes and mythology, he was not afraid of addressing contemporary events. His most famous works included the scene of the notorious catastrophe of the frigate Medusa and detailed portraits of mentally ill patients.

1. He Was One of the Most Influential Romantic Painters

Theodore Gericault was born in 1791 into a privileged French family that allowed him to pursue art professionally. His father, a tobacco merchant and plantation owner, recognized the son’s inclinations rather early and sent him to study art at the age of 17. Gericault was a talented student, but he lacked patience and was prone to impulsive outbreaks, which annoyed his conservative teachers.

Gericault’s character seemed like a perfect match for the newly emerging artistic style that would soon take over the entire European scene. Romanticism was the movement that celebrated emotion and dramatized the inner struggle of its characters. It occurred as the counter-force to the rigid and sober Neo-Classical art, too focused on canons and rules to evoke any real feeling from its audiences. The Romantic hero, almost exclusively a young man with a privileged background, exists at odds with the world, misunderstood by it. The nature that surrounds him reflects his complex feelings, erupting in storms. If a Romanticist painting does not have a central hero, he is substituted by a crowd, necessarily suffering from a natural disaster, the gods’ wrath, or war. They are passive and desperate in the face of a force much bigger than all of them and accept their fate with cries and tears.

2. He Impressed Jacques-Louis David and Gustave Courbet

Major success came to Gericault in 1812 with the painting The Charging Chasseur. According to a legend, Jacques-Louis David, upon seeing the painting, immediately exclaimed that he did not recognize the artist who had painted such an impressive work. An established and respected painter, David was shocked he missed out on someone so talented.

Jacques-Louis David was one of the major influences on Gericault’s art. David, known for his fluctuating political loyalty, frequently painted contemporary events like the murder of Jean-Paul Marat and the coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte. However, all these subjects were of heroic or quasi-mythological character. Gericault instead frequently relied on ordinary characters rather than leaders or heroes, deeming them worthy of depiction. In that sense, he prepared the ground for the generation of Realists like Gustave Courbet, who would soon adopt the same approach, making it even more radical.

However, Gericault’s works had movement and dynamism that was previously unseen. Even Jacques-Louis David’s most dramatic works were static, with impressive yet heavyweight compositions. Gericault’s characters, on the contrary, keep moving and swirling, pulling the viewer into the vertigo of their experiences.

3. He Studied Painting in Italy

In Gericault’s time, the most prestigious award an artist could win was the Roman Prize or Prix de Rome. The artists competing for the prize were isolated in rooms with no reference materials and asked to create a painting on an assigned topic. Usually, this was a mythological or historical subject. The winner was awarded a scholarship that covered six years of living and studying art in Italy. The competition was intense, and many artists took it too personally. For instance, Jacques-Louis David, after losing the competition for the third time, went on a hunger strike, threatening the Royal Academy of Art with suicide.

Gericault also lost the competition but managed to find a solution. After selling several of his paintings, he went to Italy on his own. This way, he was not required to spend six years there and fulfill a pre-determined program. He could take everything he needed from Italian art. He visited Rome, Naples, and Florence and studied the works of Caravaggio and Michelangelo. In 1818, he returned to France but later regretted it. This regret was expressed in a series of idealized landscapes that featured Italian nature and architecture.

4. He Created One of the Most Scandalous Paintings

The most famous painting that cemented Gericault’s reputation was presented to the public in 1819. For a long time, Gericault searched for a topic for his grand masterpiece. In 1816, the frigate Medusa ran into shallow waters on its way to Senegal. The ship did not have enough lifeboats, and 152 passengers and crew members had to fit on a makeshift raft that drifted in the waves for two weeks. Starving and exhausted, they attacked each other and resorted to cannibalism. By the time when the rescue team discovered the raft, only 15 passengers were alive.

The painting caused a sensation in the artistic scene. However, many criticized it for a low subject matter painted in such a grandiose manner. The swarm of bodies on the raft referenced another legendary artwork that Gericault witnessed in Rome—the famous fresco by Michelangelo, The Last Judgement, found on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.

5. He Visited Morgues to Practice

Gericault had a rather unconventional approach to painting realistically. While working on The Raft of the Medusa, he frequented hospitals and morgues, drawing and painting dying patients, severed limbs, and heads. He even convinced the nurses to give him some body parts of executed criminals so he could observe the process of decay in his studio. The large dark room where he painted smelled so horribly that the artist’s visitors became sick and refused to enter.

Thankfully, none of Gericault’s gruesome experiments made it into final versions of his paintings, remaining only on sketches. Still, his method of work remains a striking example of one’s dedication to art, which can sometimes get quite ugly and unsettling.

6. He Studied Mental Health Issues

In the 1800s, psychiatry was still in its infancy. During Gericault’s lifetime, one of the popular concepts of dissecting and studying mental illnesses was monomania—an intrusive thought or action that drives an otherwise stable patient into madness. Monomanias were believed to leave marks on the patient’s facial expressions and postures, expressing the main emotion or concern of their monomania. Allegedly, by discovering the key idea that tormented the monomaniac, the doctor could offer suitable help.

As photography was still not in use, medical illustrations were a popular method of teaching and diagnosing. In the 1820s, the French physician Étienne-Jean Georget commissioned ten paintings from Gericault that illustrated several monomanias. All models for these paintings were actual patients of Georget, whom he described as clinical cases. Only five works from the series have survived—A Woman Addicted to Gambling, A Child Snatcher, A Kleptomaniac, A Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy, and A Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Command. Until recently, there was no information about the missing half of the series.

In 2023, the influential medical journal The Lancet published a surprising article in which a molecular biologist and art history enthusiast named Javier Burgos claimed to have discovered three more portraits from the nearly-lost series by Gericault. While visiting an exhibition of a private collection that included Gericault’s work, Burgos noticed how similar one of the portraits was to the existing Georget portraits. Portrait of a Man, Homo Melancholicus was executed in exactly the same proportions as the rest of the series, with identical style, detailing, and color palette. The dress of Homo Melancholicus was painted with the same tone of red used for the scarf of A Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy.

Diving deeper into private collections and unattributed works in museums, Burgos made two new discoveries. One of the works featured a man matching a case of monomania of drunkenness described by Georget, and the other a man suffering from panic attacks triggered by witnessing the horrors of the Vendée War during the French Revolution. Professional art historians do not refute Burgos’ claims completely but insist that further research is required.

7. Theodore Gericault Died Young

Unfortunately, Gericault’s promising artistic career, marked by The Raft of the Medusa and his other works, was over prematurely. In 1824, at the age of only 32, Gericault died from complications from a surgery which were worsened by a chronic tuberculoid infection. After several horse-riding accidents, a tumor formed in Gericault’s lower spine. A few days before his death, he went through surgery, during which he refused to be sedated so he could observe the process using a mirror.

One of the survivors of the Medusa shipwreck, geographer Alexandre Correard, who befriended Gericault during his work on the legendary painting, created the last portrait of the artist. The chilling work, often mistakenly attributed to the dying Gericault himself, shows a young man in his early thirties turned into a skeleton with bloodshot, blurry eyes.

During the 1820s, Théodore Géricault painted a series of portraits of mentally ill patients commissioned by their doctor. The doctor intended to use them as illustrations for his research paper. After Géricault’s death, five out of ten works were lost without a trace. Two centuries later, a molecular biologist claims he found the missing half of Theodor Géricault’s series.

Who Was Théodore Géricault?

Théodore Géricault was a famous French artist who created his art in the first decades of the 19th century. Géricault was a close friend of Eugene Delacroix and painted in a similar Romantic manner. However, his works already showed a certain degree of sharp and even provocative honesty that would soon manifest itself in the Realist movement led by Gustave Courbet.

Géricault lived a tragically short life, yet managed to create a remarkable and influential oeuvre. His most famous work was the famous Raft of the Medusa, a gruesome and tragic scene of shipwreck survivors stranded on a raft at sea. The painting was a reaction to Géricault’s contemporary events and was perceived as a political expression of the corruption of modern French society. In 1822, just two years before his sudden death, Géricault created a series of paintings for a French psychiatrist Étienne-Jean Georget.

The Monomania Theory

Of course, psychiatry functioned differently in Géricault’s time than today. Still, the origins and, most importantly, ways of treating various mental illnesses were already a pressing topic. Psychiatrists studied their patients and built various theories not only to alleviate their suffering but also to figure out how this suffering came into existence.

The French psychiatrist Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol was one of such researchers who came up with the concept of monomania as the unhealthy fixation that turned an otherwise healthy person into his patient. Monomania could affect one’s emotions (e.g. sudden fits of anger), thoughts (e.g. delusions of grandeur, like believing oneself to be a king), or even physical actions (e.g. an uncontrollable urge to steal). Additionally, monomania was believed to leave visible traces on a patient’s facial features and behaviors. In present-day psychiatry, monomania is seen as something outdated and inherently reductive, unable to correctly explain the origins of the patient’s condition and its nuances.

Géricault’s Monomania Series

In 1822, Étienne-Jean Georget, a student and colleague of Esquirol, commissioned Géricault ten portraits of his patients suffering from various forms of monomania. Georget was the chief physician of the Salpêtrière asylum and intended to put his practice into theoretical use. The paintings were supposed to teach students and act as detailed illustrations of monomania manifestations. The series featured a kidnapper, a kleptomaniac, and an old woman addicted to gambling. The most striking figures, however, were the aged woman suffering from obsessive envy and unmotivated anger and the middle-aged man who believed himself to be a military commander. All these cases were described in detail by Georget and Esquirel, providing more insights into patients’ behavior and motivations.

After Étienne-Jean Georget died, the ten portraits passed to his students. Today, they are known only by surnames Lachèze and Maréchal. Lachèze’s part of the collection was later separated and sold to different collections. Yet, his five portraits were the ones that were familiar to art historians since the 1860s. The other half of the series, however, vanished without a trace.

The Missing Part

Géricault left no information concerning the series’s composition, and thus, researchers could not possibly learn what he painted on the remaining five canvases. There were, however, two prevalent theories. The first suggested that the second half of the series represented the same patients, either cured or at least noticeably improving after the treatment administered to them by Georget and his colleagues. The possible changes in appearance and behavior could illustrate how effective monomania treatment could be.

However, this theory had two serious setbacks. The first one is related to Théodore Géricault’s lifespan. The artist died two years after completing the five remaining portraits of the series. However effective Georget’s treatment could be, the time was hardly sufficient to create any serious before & after effects, let alone give the artist enough time to finish not one but five portraits. Another issue was the fact that Georget had two students who shared the paintings with each other. If Géricault indeed depicted the same patients twice, it would be rather odd to separate the double portraits.

The most prominent version suggested that the remaining five portraits represented five other patients of Étienne-Jean Georget and Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol. The hints to exact diagnoses and details of characters could be found in the writings and studies of both psychiatrists. Surprisingly, two centuries later, a hint appeared that could probably solve this mystery.

Théodore Géricault’s Asylum Series: Could the Mystery Be Solved?

In 2013, a Spanish molecular biologist called Javier Burgos visited an exhibition Borderline: Artists between Normality and Madness in the Italian city of Ravenna. The show was focused on the artistic treatment of mental illnesses as well as their manifestations in the works of famous artists. Burgos had a deep interest in art but regarded it as a hobby. His primary field of work concerns neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia and or Parkinson’s disease.

One of the works in the Ravenna exhibition was a painting attributed by Géricault titled Portrait of a Man, Homo Melancholicus. The painting, which belongs to a private collector, represents a man wearing a red garment typical for Catholic clergy. His face expresses sadness and indifference, his wrinkled brows form a shape known in Géricault’s time as omega melancholicum, a distinctive sign of melancholy. Melancholia was a fairly common diagnosis, and it certainly was described in the writings of Georget.

Burgos noticed how similar the format of the portrait was to those featured in the Monomaniacs series. Indeed, the position of the head, its scale, and its angle, as well as the light source matched the other five works by Géricault. Upon closer inspection, Burgos noted that the red tone used for the man’s dress was strikingly similar to that used to paint the scarf on The Hyena of the Salpêtrière, the patient suffering from fits of anger and envy. In 2021, he published an article claiming that the painting belonged to the lost part of the series.

More discoveries followed. In 2022, Burgos located the second portrait, which depicted the monomania of drunkenness. He even found a half-torn label stating that this was the work of Géricault, given to its owner by the widow of Marechal, the second student of Georget. The man in the painting has a distinctive red nose, and bruises on his head probably caused by falling while intoxicated. He also demonstrates troubles with thermoregulation, typical for alcoholics: although he is wearing a winter hat, his shirt is wide open. Georget wrote extensively on how chronic alcohol intoxication could lead to dementia, which he studied.

The most tragic yet questionable case Burgos uncovered was the third one. The painting known as Portrait of a Man, Called Vandeen was located in the Louvre the whole time. The man represented is wearing a costume typical for the Vendée region in France. His appearance corresponded to the clinical case described by Esquirol. He had a patient who was around 30 years old and experienced severe childhood trauma from witnessing the Vendée War—a conflict between pro- and anti-revolutionary crowds in the 1790s. The conflict was one of the most violent episodes of the French Revolution, with an estimated death toll of up to 200,000. The patient, exposed to violence and death in his early years, experienced panic attacks and general mental disturbance.

The Louvre purchased the portrait, attributed to Géricault, in the 1930s. Until recently, art curators believed it was painted during Géricault’s trip to Vendée. However, if Burgos’ theory is correct, that means the artist deliberately chose the costume to link the patient to his story. Esquirol wrote that the man avoided close contact and refused to be shaved.

However, not all art experts are enthusiastic about Javier Burgos’ hypothesis. Although the visual similarity of the portraits is obvious, the attribution of all three portraits to Géricault’s hand remains questionable. Even if these works were indeed painted by him, it does not necessarily mean they were part of the series. Still, Burgos’ theories did not meet radical opposition from most experts; rather, they insisted on further research and thorough attribution.

Rembrandt created over 40 painted self-portraits, each capturing his evolution both as a man and an artist. Through these works, he documented his journey—his youthful vigor, his love, and early success, as well as the heartbreaking loneliness that marked his later years. These self-portraits not only reflect his personal struggles but also his artistic development. Read on to explore more about Rembrandt’s self-portraits and discover some of the most famous ones.

Why Did Rembrandt Paint So Many Self-Portraits?

Over the 63 years of his life, Rembrandt painted dozens of self-portraits, with more than 40 of them being paintings. He was the first artist in history to use the genre so extensively, turning it from a simple exercise into an autobiographical tool. Rembrandt’s self-portraits reflected his path from the start of his career to his last years.

From a young man learning to paint, he grew into a respectful and wealthy professional painter and, after falling into financial hardship, transformed into an aged man living in poverty. To paint his own face, Rembrandt relied on a mirror. Thus, the features we see in his paintings are reversed. Rembrandt’s self-portraits are crucial documents of his life, concerns, ideas, and inspirations, and remain an invaluable source for art historians.

Present-day art experts consider self-portraiture as a format that means much more than superficial artistic vanity. A self-portrait is an act of self-recognition as both the artist and the subject worth being painted. In that sense, Rembrandt’s numerous self-portraits illustrate the exploration of his identity as an artist and the transformation of his self-perception.

1. A Young Rembrandt (Self-Portrait with Disheveled Hair)

One of the earliest self-portraits by Rembrandt was painted in the artist’s early twenties. Most art historians believe it was an exercise in chiaroscuro, the sharp contrast between light and shadow that gave extra depth and expression to images. In 1628, Rembrandt still lived in his native Leiden, where he recently opened a studio. Just 22 years old at the time, he soon was noticed by important commissioners, including the secretary of the Prince of Orange Constantijn Huygens. Huygens connected Rembrandt with affluent art patrons from the Hague, bringing him new commissions and an initial boost of recognition.

2. Self-Portrait in a Cap, With Eyes Wide Open

This unusually expressive self-portrait was part of Rembrandt’s studies on emotion and facial features. In the 17th century, Dutch artists developed a specific type of painting known as Tronies—character heads with distinctive and often exaggerated emotions, no backstory, and no extra setting. These paintings had a focus on specific types of characters or costumes and were not tied to specific individuals or personalities.

Rembrandt’s self-portrait etchings were mostly small (one of them, stolen during the infamous Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist, was the size of a postage stamp), and represented informal exercises or studies, not intended for presentation. In his painted works, however, Rembrandt often created a curated vision of himself that would reflect and support his social status.

3. The Prodigal Son in Tavern (Rembrandt and Saskia)

Wikipedia

The 1630s were the most successful and happy decade of Rembrandt’s life. Still a young painter, he managed to achieve tremendous success over just a few years and he moved from Leiden to Amsterdam. There, he opened a studio as a portrait painter. In 1634, he married Saskia van Uylenburgh, a cousin of an influential art dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh, who helped launch Rembrandt’s career. Most likely, van Uylenburgh was responsible for passing the Amsterdam Surgeons’ Guild commission of a group portrait to Rembrandt, thus leading to the creation of the famous painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.

The marriage was a happy one, with Rembrandt seeming deeply and sincerely in love with his wife. Saskia’s social status was higher than that of the artist, and thus, the marriage was materially beneficial for him as well. The 1935 self-portrait is a rare painting showing both Rembrandt and Saskia. The subject illustrated the Old Testament story of the Prodigal Son, a young man who wasted his share of inheritance on superficial joys and came to his father asking for forgiveness. Rembrandt painted himself as the son still unfamiliar with poverty and hardship, drinking in a tavern and entertained by a charming young woman, represented by Saskia. By fate or by accident, the further events of Rembrandt’s life would turn out strikingly similar to the Biblical story.

4. Self-Portrait at the Age of 34

The most monumental and grandiose of Rembrandt’s self-portraits was painted in 1640, less than a year after he and Saskia moved into a new house in a prestigious part of Amsterdam mostly occupied by wealthy merchants. In fact, Saskia was not entirely happy with the move, as she was worried about the loans Rembrandt took out to pay for it. In the end, she was right to worry, as after her death Rembrandt would fall into financial hardship and go bankrupt.

Still, in 1640 everything was well. Rembrandt was a wealthy man who lived in luxury and amassed a large collection of artworks. His skill was recognized well beyond the Netherlands. In the famous self-portrait, Rembrandt painted himself wearing furs, velvet, and gold jewelry. His dress does not reflect Rembrandt’s contemporary fashions. Rather, it is typical for the early 1500s, when painters like Titian and Raphael painted portraits of the Italian elites in similar poses and tones. Thus, Rembrandt represented himself as both equal to the great masters of past centuries, and as a member of the new elite, who earned his status with his artistic skill.

5. The Large Self-Portrait

In 1652, Rembrandt experienced the heaviest crisis of his life. After the death of Saskia in 1642, he gradually lost grasp of his financial stability, with his spending not aligning with his earnings. At the same time, the unique and expressive style of painting that made him famous a decade before began falling out of favor with the public, leading to students leaving his workshop and a radical drop in commission numbers. His personal life was also crumbling. In her will, Saskia stated she granted Rembrandt access to the funds she left to their son as long as the artist did not remarry. Thus, a decade later, Rembrandt was unable to marry his new partner Hendrickje Stoffels without losing access to the money. The daughter of Stoffels and Rembrandt was born out of wedlock, adding to the social pressure and judgment faced by both of them.

The Large Self-Portrait represented a stark contrast with the depictions from the decade before. Instead of furs and gold, Rembrandt is wearing worker’s clothes and looks at the viewer with a somber acceptance of his position.

6. Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul

In his late years, Rembrandt often painted Christian scenes, sometimes using himself as a model. There, the personality of a saint attached to the artist’s face was not an expression of vanity or self-identification, but an attempt to make the sacred figure more relatable. In the 1660s, religious scenes and Biblical characters were not in favor of Protestant art commissioners, as they valued secular scenes more. Still, Rembrandt continued to paint Christian images, perhaps reflecting on his own hopes and hardships.

7. Self-Portrait With Two Circles

This self-portrait from 1665 is one of the most mysterious and strange paintings done by the master. It is abnormally big and it features Rembrandt with his painting tools and a white cap that already appeared in other works. The strangest elements, however, are the two circles painted in the background that seem unrelated to the rest of the composition. Some art historians believe they could reflect Rembrandt’s intent to illustrate his artistic mastery by painting perfect circles, yet both shapes are incomplete and were placed in a rather strange manner. Other researchers have tried to find a symbolic explanation for the circles, including connecting them to the concepts of Sacred Geometry or Kabbalah, but there is still not enough certainty.

8. The Last of Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits

The Self-Portrait at the Age of 63 by Rembrandt was painted during the last months of his life. He died in October 1669 and had a surprisingly modest funeral, with only his illegitimate daughter Cornelia present. In one of his final works, Rembrandt did not make any attempt to look better than he felt. His face was old and tired, covered in spots and blemishes, and his eyes looked tired and dark. The X-ray scan of the work has shown that the artist repainted the section showing his clasped hands. Initially, he painted himself holding a brush in one hand and special support for weak hands to allow for more precision.

Many famous architectural monuments that appear quintessentially Russian were actually built by foreigners. The iconic walls of the Moscow Kremlin were built by Italian Renaissance architects, and later on, the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg was built by Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli. An Italian born in Paris in 1700 who accompanied his father Carlo Bartolomeo to St. Petersburg in 1716, Rastrelli is best known for the palaces he built in Russia for Empress Elizabeth of Russia. He began his career at the Russian court working for her predecessor, Empress Anna.

1. Rundale Palace

An elegant Baroque palace with a yellow and white decorative scheme, Rundale Palace is one of the most iconic palaces in the Baltic region. Rastrelli was commissioned to build the palace by Empress Anna of Russia as a summer residence for her royal favorite, Ernst Johann von Biron. Prior to becoming empress in 1730, Anna had been Duchess of Courland, a Polish fief in present-day Latvia. When the ducal line of the House of Kettler became extinct in 1737, Anna encouraged the Courlanders to elect Biron as duke.

Biron had acquired the site in 1735. An existing manor was demolished and its masonry used in the construction of the new palace. Work began in 1736 but gradually slowed down from 1738 as work on Jelgava Palace was prioritized. Shortly after Anna’s death in October 1740, Biron fell from grace and was exiled to Russia. Work on the palace was stalled until 1762, when Biron was restored to the duchy of Courland. Out of favor in Russia, Rastrelli supervised work at Rundale between 1764 and 1767, and the final works were completed by 1770.

Biron spent his summers at the palace from 1768 until his death in 1772. His son Duke Peter preferred Vircava Manor near Jelgava as his summer residence. When Courland was formally annexed to the Russian Empire in 1795 following the third partition of Poland, the palace was given to Valerian Zubov, younger brother of Catherine the Great’s lover Platon Zubov.

Rundale was occupied by Napoleonic troops in 1812 and by German troops in World War I and suffered badly during the Latvian War of Independence in 1919. While a few renovated rooms were used for various purposes, in 1972, the Latvian Soviet government opted to fully restore the palace. The work was completed in 2014, and the palace is one of the most popular attractions in Latvia.

2. Jelgava Palace

While construction work at Rundale was underway, in 1738, Rastrelli was commissioned to build a new palace for Biron in Mitau, the capital of Courland, now known as Jelgava. The old castle on the site, which had been built by the Livonian Order in 1265, was demolished to make way for the palace, which would become the largest in the Baltic states. The plans for the new palace included space for a crypt as the final resting place for Brion and his family. The sarcophagi of the Kettler dukes were also moved from the old church on the site, which had been demolished.

Jelgava Palace shared a similar fate to Rundale Palace. Work stopped in 1740 and restarted in 1762, and the palace was completed in 1772, the same year of Duke Ernst Johann’s death. It served as Duke Peter’s main city residence until his death in 1795, after which it was taken over by the Russian provincial administration. At the turn of the 19th century, the future Louis XVIII lived in the palace for a few years after being granted asylum by the Russian court. The palace also came under Napoleonic occupation and served as a military hospital.

After suffering extensive damage during the Latvian War of Independence, the palace was renovated and given to the Jelgava Academy of Agriculture in 1939, shortly before the palace was ruined again during the Second World War. Reconstruction efforts began in 1957, and in 1961, the palace returned to the Latvia Academy of Agriculture, which became the Latvian University of Agriculture in 1990 and the Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies in 2018. The university supervised further reconstruction works between 2001 and 2018. While most of the palace is used for academic purposes, visitors can access the burial vault of the Dukes of Courland, managed by the Rundale Palace Museum.

3. Peterhof Palace

In 1714, Peter the Great commissioned the construction of a palace at a site a few miles west of his new capital of St. Petersburg called Peterhof (German for “Peter’s Court”). In keeping with his own restrained tastes, the original palace was initially a modest affair, but the tsar intended to dazzle the foreign dignitaries he received at the palace with extensive gardens featuring a Grand Cascade and a canal leading into the Neva Bay. The main decorative element of the cascade, known as the Samson Fountain, was designed by the architect’s father Carlo Bartolomeo Rastrelli and installed in 1735 in honor of Peter’s victory over the Swedish Army at Poltava in 1709.

Peter’s daughter, Empress Elizabeth came to the throne in 1741 after overthrowing her infant cousin Ivan VI in a military coup. Her tastes were far more extravagant than those of her father, and in 1745, she commissioned Rastrelli to transform the palace to suit her style. Rastrelli proved equal to the task, adding one floor to the main palace and extending it outwards by building two wings and symmetrical chapels on either side to fill the width of the gardens. Rastrelli’s creation came to be known as the Grand Peterhof Palace.

Catherine the Great was less enamored with the Baroque, and during the 1760s and 1770s the interiors were overhauled in the more austere Neoclassical style. The interiors of the eastern wing were remodeled again in the 1840s by Tsar Nicholas I’s daughter Olga Nikolaevna. Like many of Rastrelli’s palaces outside St. Petersburg, Peterhof was destroyed by the Germans in the Second World War. Reconstruction work began shortly after the war. In 1964, the first rooms were reopened to the public.

4. Saint Andrew’s Church, Kyiv

Rastrelli’s commissions for Empress Elizabeth were not solely restricted to St. Petersburg and its environs. In 1744, the empress commissioned a new palace in Kyiv from Rastrelli. Part of the scheme involved the construction of a church on a hill where, according to the Tale of Bygone Years (also anachronistically known as the Russian Primary Chronicle), St. Andrew the Apostle had placed a cross and prophesized the emergence of a great city. Several churches dedicated to St. Andrew had occupied the site over the centuries. Rastrelli’s design envisaged a church with a central dome topped with a spire, and four smaller spires at each corner. The church was to be accessed via a large ramp leading up to the main entrance. Due to the steepness of the hill, this became a staircase.

Empress Elizabeth was present at the laying of the foundation stone of St. Andrew’s Church in September 1744, and work on the structure continued until 1757. The interior decoration took another decade to complete. The church was built under the personal supervision of Russian architect Ivan Michurin, who surveyed the site and built deep foundations into the hill to maintain the integrity of the building.

The church’s blue walls, white columns, and green roofs form an iconic part of Kyiv’s skyline. St. Andrew’s Church also preserves Rastrelli’s interiors, including a three-tier baroque red and gold iconostasis. The church continued to operate following the Russian Revolution but was closed in 1932 and turned into a museum. Services were restored during World War II but stopped again in 1961. The church was transferred to the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in 2008, but before its annexation by the Moscow Patriarchate in 2018, it was gifted to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

5. Smolny Convent

In 1744, Rastrelli was commissioned to build the Smolny Convent. Located on the banks of the Neva, the site had previously been occupied by a summer palace belonging to Peter the Great’s second wife Empress Catherine I. As the daughter of Peter and Catherine, Empress Elizabeth had spent much of her childhood at the palace but rarely visited after seizing the throne. When a fire destroyed much of the palace in 1744, Elizabeth decided to build a convent on the site for aristocratic girls. The empress also envisaged potentially retiring to the monastic complex herself.

Rastrelli initially submitted a design in a Roman baroque style with a single-domed church and a four-story belltower. Not long after work started in 1748, the empress ordered Rastrelli to modify his design to conform to Russian architectural traditions. Rastrelli accordingly submitted a revised plan in the form of a conventional Greek cross with a central dome and four smaller belfries in the corners. Under the new plan, the belltower was now to be in five tiers and reach 140 meters in height. After the design was approved, Rastrelli added a further tier to extend the belltower to 170 meters, which would have made it the tallest building in Europe.

Work on the cathedral began in 1751 and proceeded quickly, but the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in 1756 diverted resources away from the project, which ground to a halt. The complex remained unfinished by Elizabeth’s death in January 1762. In 1764, Rastrelli was dismissed as court architect by Empress Catherine, who appointed her favored architect Yury Felten to convert the buildings to house educational institutions for noble girls. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Smolny Institute of Noble Maidens moved into a purpose-built structure next door, which served as the headquarters of the Bolshevik Party during the October Revolution of 1917.

During the 1820s, Tsar Nicholas I ordered Vasily Stasov to finish the cathedral, which was consecrated as the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in 1835. Rastrelli’s plans for the belltower were never realized. The cathedral was shut during the 1920s following the Russian Revolution, and services did not resume until 2010.

6. Catherine Palace

The Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo (Tsar’s Village) owes its name to Empress Catherine I, who had a stone palace on the site built in 1723. Naturally, the palace could not accommodate Elizabeth’s extravagance, and around 1743, work began on enlarging the existing palace. Rastrelli assumed responsibility for the work on the Catherine Palace in 1748, and in 1752, Elizabeth gave approval for the reconstruction of the original palace.

Rastrelli embellished his blue-and-white façade with red gold (a gold and copper alloy), which sparkled in the sunlight. Gold gilding was also used extensively in the interiors, particularly in Rastrelli’s “Golden Enfilade.” This suite of rooms extended the full length of the palace, beginning with an antechamber leading to the Great Hall, an airy space of over 800 square meters for balls and other formal events. During the day, light flooded in from the gardens on one side and the courtyard from the other, and in the night, the room was illuminated by 696 candles.

The suite also includes the famous Amber Room, gifted by King Frederick William I of Prussia to Peter the Great in 1716. During World War II, the contents of the room were taken by German forces to Königsberg. While the fate of the original Amber Room remains a mystery, the Soviet authorities decided to rebuild the Amber Room in 1979, and the reconstructed room was opened to visitors in 2003.

During the 1770s, Catherine II commissioned the Scottish architect Charles Cameron to redecorate her apartments in her preferred Neoclassical style. Cameron was also responsible for the construction of a sculpture gallery known as the Cameron Gallery. The empress also ordered the exterior gilding to be repainted in drab olive green, resulting in a muted effect. Catherine commissioned a number of monuments in the gardens to celebrate Russia’s successes during the Russo-Turkish War (1768-1774), and in 1792, she commissioned the Italian Neoclassical architect Giacomo Quarenghi to build the Alexander Palace for her favorite grandson, the future Alexander I.

In 1811, Tsar Alexander founded the Imperial Alexander Lyceum, an educational institution for noble boys housed in a new wing of the Catherine Palace beyond Rastrelli’s chapel. The poet Alexander Pushkin and the diplomat and statesman Alexander Gorchakov were among the Lyceum’s first intake. In January 1815, the 15-year-old Pushkin recited his “Memories in Tsarskoye Selo” before the distinguished poet Gavrila Derzhavin during his oral examinations. Derzhavin approved of the teenager’s verses, which celebrated Russia’s military victories under Catherine the Great, as well as the latest victories over Napoleon in 1812. These exploits were also commemorated by a suite of rooms and a Triumphal Arch designed by Vladimir Stasov in 1817.

Following the Russian Revolution, the adjacent town of Tsarskoye Selo was renamed Detskoye Selo (Children’s Village). In 1937, it was renamed Pushkin in honor of the poet’s connection to the town.  After its destruction during World War II, reconstruction work on the Catherine Palace began in 1957. While parts of the palace were reopened to the public in 1980, work continues on the reconstruction of Catherine the Great’s suite designed by Charles Cameron.

7. Winter Palace

The Winter Palace, on the banks of the Neva in St. Petersburg, served as the official residence of Russia’s monarchs between 1732 and 1917. The palace stands on the original site of a humble log cabin which served as Peter’s first residence in the city. In 1711, Peter commissioned a small palace from Domenico Trezzini. The palace was overhauled by German architect Georg Johann Mattarnovi in 1721, and Peter died in the palace in 1725. In 1728, Peter’s grandson Tsar Peter II ordered Trezzini to enlarge the palace.

After Empress Anna came to the throne, she took residence in the neighboring Apraksin Palace, which had belonged to the recently deceased General Admiral Count Fyodor Apraksin. In 1732, she ordered Rastrelli to completely rebuild the Apraksin Palace and incorporate the adjacent Winter Palace into the scheme. Rastrelli continued to work according to the plan following Empress Elizabeth’s accession to the throne. Elizabeth preferred to live in Rastrelli’s Summer Palace on the Fontanka River, but in 1753, she commissioned an ambitious design from the architect.

Rastrelli’s new plan involved a quadrangular palace on a monumental scale. Elizabeth spared no expense on the palace and was keen to see it finished quickly, and funds were still allocated to the project during the Seven Years’ War. Work proceeded so rapidly that workers often had to wait for the arrival of new building materials. By 1759, the palace was mostly complete, but Elizabeth did not live to see the completion of the palace in 1762.

The palace became the favored city residence of Catherine II, who ordered Ivan Starov and Giacomo Quarenghi to overhaul Rastrelli’s interiors, creating the Neva enfilade consisting of three grand state rooms. The centerpiece was the Great Hall, the largest room in the palace measuring over 1,000 square meters, which was later renamed the Nicholas Hall in honor of Nicholas I.

The only parts of the palace that correspond to Rastrelli’s original design are the grand Jordan Staircase and the palace chapel. Catherine also extended the palace eastwards with the construction of two palaces known as the Small and Large Hermitages, as well as the Hermitage Theatre. Catherine intended these new spaces as a private retreat to entertain close associates and admire her growing art collection, which she put together by instructing her agents to buy up major private collections from Western Europe.

During the 1820s, Tsar Alexander I conceived of the Military Gallery of 1812, containing over 300 portraits of generals who served in the recent war against Napoleon. After the palace was heavily damaged by fire in 1837, Tsar Nicholas I ordered the rebuilding to be completed within a year, though the extensive works took more than two years to complete.

The Winter Palace has witnessed some of the most important events in Russian history. In March 1881, the dying Alexander II was brought to the palace after having his legs torn off by an assassin’s bomb. His bloodstained uniform is exhibited in the Grand Church. In January 1905, Palace Square witnessed the killing of peaceful protestors by palace guards in Bloody Sunday, leading to the 1905 Revolution. After the incident, Tsar Nicholas II and his family preferred to stay away from the city center and retreated to the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo.

During the October Revolution of 1917, Bolshevik Red Guards entered the Winter Palace to arrest members of the Provisional Government. The original “storming of the palace” was in fact a rather restrained and farcical affair, with the Red Guards breaking into the palace through a nondescript back door. In 1920, a far more dramatic reenactment was staged on the third anniversary of the event. This, in conjunction with Sergei Eisenstein’s dramatization in his 1927 film October, transformed the event into one of the most iconic scenes of the Russian Revolution.

Now part of the State Hermitage Museum, the Winter Palace attracts millions of visitors each year. The striking green-and-white decorative scheme on the palace exterior is actually relatively recent. The palace was initially decorated in a pale yellow according to Rastrelli’s original design, reminiscent of the decorative scheme of Rundale Palace. By the turn of the 20th century, the exterior was dark red. The palace only acquired its current color scheme in 1946.

In the mid to late 19th century, two of Britain’s leading creative figures could be found at the heart of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. While Dante Gabriel Rossetti became one of the most influential artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Christina Rossetti came to be seen as one of the greatest English poets of her time. Throughout both of their careers, the two siblings worked on projects together and exchanged ideas, resulting in shared themes in both poetry and painting being disseminated throughout the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

The Childhood of Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti

 Dante Gabriel Rossetti (whose birth name was Gabriel Charles Dante) was born in London in 1828, and Christina Rossetti was born in the same city in 1830. Their father, Gabriele, was an Italian poet who had been forced to leave Italy because of his criticisms of King Ferdinand of Naples. Their mother, Frances Polidori, was a governess from London. Having been hired as a professor at King’s College in 1831, Gabriele was extremely passionate about his literary scholarship, which orbited around the medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri. This passion touched the lives of all of the Rossetti children, with the four of them writing their own stories and poems at a young age.

While their siblings William and Maria were known as the “two calms” of the family, Dante Gabriel and Christina were known as the “two storms.” While this nickname may suggest that the two had an overly emotional nature, Dante Gabriel and Christina showed studious dedication to their respective crafts even in their early years. As a teenager, Dante Gabriel was a student at Sass’s Drawing Academy and entered the Antique School of the Royal Academy once he had completed his studies there. By the age of twelve, Christina was seriously writing poetry and had her poems privately published by her grandfather when she was sixteen.

During this period of her life, her father Gabriele became seriously ill with what could have been tuberculosis and began to go blind. In order to earn extra income, Christina helped her mother earn a living as a teacher, while at the same time balancing writing her poetry. Dante Gabriel, in the meantime, immersed himself in his studies, and by 1848 had become a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

A Pre-Raphaelite Partnership

Even before the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s official formation, Dante Gabriel encouraged Christina to share her poetry with the movement’s early members. At the time, Christina was not interested, which Dante Gabriel attributed to her modest nature. While Christina never became an official member of the group, both the brother and the sister played an important role in the development of the type of language and imagery that would come to define the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Both of them, for instance, had some of their writings published in the short-lived Pre-Raphaelite publication The Germ.

Christina even posed for her brother’s paintings Ecce Ancilla Domini! and The Girlhood of Mary Virgin. As their careers developed, each seemed to have been keenly aware of what the other was either doing or had done, and used it as a form of personal inspiration. This familial interconnection resulted in some of the definitive visual and literary works of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Goblin Market

A key example of the interconnectedness of Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s work can be found in their collaborations on Christina’s published volumes of poetry. Dante Gabriel was enthusiastic about helping his sister to become a recognized author, personally convincing the publisher Alexander MacMillan to begin publishing her work. The relationship with MacMillan eventually led to the publication of her anthology Goblin Market and Other Poems in 1862. Goblin Market quickly became one of Christina’s most beloved poems. It recounts the story of two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, who face down the temptations offered by a group of sinister goblins. The poem is extremely rich in its language, creating a vivid fairytale world in the minds of its readers in which a failure to resist evil can prove deadly.

The world that Christina Rossetti constructed in this poem was extremely influential on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, with artists constructing similar fables in their art. Dante Gabriel himself was not immune to this influence, and it can be felt in the illustrations he created for the poem when it was first published. For example, his illustration for the title page of the book encapsulates the kind of fantasy world that would come to be so important for future Pre-Raphaelite works. It features the two heroines of the poem sleeping peacefully in their bed, with a quote from the poem describing the sisters, “golden head by golden head,” directly below.

In the distance, the goblins process with their goods in what resembles a sort of danse macabre. This constant threat of evil in the face of innocence, illustrated in both the poem and the works of art that Dante Gabriel created for it, came to be a defining feature of the art of other artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelite style, such as John William Waterhouse and Edward Burne-Jones.

The Prince’s Progress

After Goblin Market and Other Poems achieved success, Dante Gabriel encouraged Christina to continue releasing tomes of poetry, which ultimately culminated in The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems in 1866. Dante Gabriel attempted to double as both illustrator and editor of this anthology, informing Christina on what scenes he thought could be added to the volume’s longest poem, The Prince’s Progress, and which of the volume’s other poems deserved to be removed.

Christina listened to his advice but pushed back firmly on many of his ideas. Nevertheless, in The Prince’s Progress, Christina crafted a tale that had a distinct Pre-Raphaelite sensibility. The poem centers around a princess longing for her prince, while the prince’s escapades delay him from reaching her before she dies. Its themes of temptation and the pain that love can bring became the defining themes of many future Pre-Raphaelite works. Like Goblin Market, it was also rich in detail, particularly in its depictions of the prince’s heartbroken paramour.

Once more, Dante Gabriel’s illustrations for the work built upon the Pre-Raphaelite world that Christina had described in her text, framing the characters in a distinctly medieval setting. The attire of the characters is long and flowing, evocative of a simpler and purer time, and their surroundings feature many medieval details. Pre-Raphaelite artists had already been crafting such worlds in their earlier works and would continue to do so throughout the 19th century. Through illustrating the manuscript in such a way, Dante Gabriel firmly asserted his sister’s identity as a Pre-Raphaelite poet.

Italia, Io Ti Saluto!

Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s works were also connected by more abstract interests and themes. One of the most important of these was a love of their father’s native Italy. In the 1860s, both of them used their understanding of Italian culture to explore their own complex emotions in a particularly impactful way. The deep sense of emotion expressed by Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti at this time, both in poetry and in painting, pushed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood forward on its trajectory towards intensely psychological works of art.

Dante Gabriel, for instance, began work on his painting Beata Beatrix in this decade. This painting was created in response to the death of the artist’s wife, Elizabeth Siddal, in 1862. In the painting, Elizabeth Siddal is depicted in front of the Ponte Vecchio bridge in Florence, Italy, closing her eyes with a peaceful expression. Both this Italian imagery and the title of the painting are drawn from the poetry of Dante Alighieri, the subject of many of Gabriele Rossetti’s writings, with specific reference to the death of Dante’s love interest Beatrice as described in La Vita Nuova. By giving the painting this title and framing the subject with imagery drawn from Dante Alighieri’s Florence, the artist suggests that his mourning for Elizabeth is as profound as the poet’s was for Beatrice.

In 1865, Christina’s poem Italia, Io Ti Saluto! was written. Like the title of Beata Beatrix, the title of the poem firmly establishes a connection between the author and the nation of Italy. Italia, Io Ti Saluto!, translated into English, literally means, “Italy, I greet you!” The poem was written while Christina was traveling through Italy with her brother William and her mother Frances and expresses the alienation she felt from the English culture in which she was born. In the text of the poem, Christina anticipates eventually having to return to England, illuminating her sense of mourning with the words,

To see no more the country half my own,Nor hear the half familiar speech,Amen, I say; I turn to that bleak NorthWhence I came forth –The South lies out of reach.

Christina Rossetti’s “Day-Dreams” and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “The Day Dream”

One of the greatest examples of the mutual inspiration between the brother and sister lies with Christina’s 1857 poem Day-Dreams, and Dante Gabriel’s 1880 painting The Day Dream. In her poem, Christina writes from the perspective of a man wondering why the woman he loves seems to be in a trance, deeply unaware of the world around her. The poem describes the woman in the stanza:

So she sits and doth not answerWith her dreaming eyes,With her languid look deliciousAlmost Paradise,Less than happy, over wise.

Dante Gabriel put these words into visual form in his painting The Day Dream. Here, the subject of the painting, the artist’s mistress Jane Morris, similarly looks out with a dreamlike expression. The lack of emotion on her face draws attention to her unknown state of mind, crafting a mystery in the same manner as Christina’s poem.

At the time of The Day Dream’s creation, the artist had written his own poem to accompany the painting. Unlike Christina, Dante Gabriel focuses heavily on natural imagery in his poem, which accounts for the emphasis on the foliage surrounding Jane Morris in the painting. Nevertheless, both poems explore the concept of a woman lost in her own thoughts and the effect such a woman has on a male admirer.

As a result, it seems likely that Dante Gabriel was, in his own way, attempting to reinterpret an idea that his sister had articulated in her own work. It is important to note that the painting The Day Dream was completed over twenty years after Christina Rossetti originally wrote her poem. Even though many years had passed, the impact of Christina’s words on Dante Gabriel’s painting seems to suggest that her poetry remained with him, no matter what challenges the passage of time brought.

Rembrandt van Rijn was a master of light and shadow, renowned for his unique ability to create depth and emotion through his use of multi-layered painting techniques. His works, which seem to glow with life, have captivated audiences for centuries. Since his death, these masterpieces have lived on, full of mysteries, losses, and surprising revelations that continue to intrigue scholars and art enthusiasts alike. Take a closer look at the seven most famous Rembrandt paintings.

1. “The Night Watch”: The Most Famous Rembrandt Painting

The most famous painting by Rembrandt was commissioned by a unit of the Amsterdam Civic Guard. The painting is a masterpiece of group portrait and composition, as it contains 34 different characters, almost all clearly identifiable as real people and the work’s commissioners. Nonetheless, Rembrandt highlighted the most important figures by placing them in the spotlight. The central character of the scene is Captain Banninck Cocq, the unit’s leader. Contrary to its popular name, The Night Watch scene is unfolding in daylight. The misattribution happened due to old varnish that darkened with age. The actual title of the work is Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq.

Over the centuries since its creation, The Night Watch lived through many events that affected its condition. With the beginning of World War II in 1939, the canvas was rolled up and hidden inside a mountain vault near Maastricht. Moreover, The Night Watch was attacked by vandals three times: in 1911, 1975, and 1990.

2. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp

Another of Rembrandt’s compositional masterpieces, The Anatomy Lesson was a commission from the Amsterdam Surgeons Guild headed by Dr. Tulp, who is seen performing a dissection. The body of the dissected man belonged to Aris Kindt who was hanged for armed robbery. Unlike many of his contemporaries who painted dissections, Rembrandt did not cover the body’s face, insisting that the surgeons dealt with real human beings. Instead, he placed a shadow over Kindt’s face to indicate his difference from the living.

Art historians doubt that Rembrandt ever personally dissected human flesh to study anatomy. Most likely, he attended dissections performed by surgeons, which were treated in his time as public entertainment for the middle and upper classes, and studied the position of bones and muscles from anatomy books. Present-day surgeons noticed the mistakes in the muscle structure that would have been avoided if Rembrandt had worked with actual human body parts.

3. Danaë

Painted in 1636, the painting was one of the most sensual works in all of Rembrandt’s career. Rembrandt’s interpretation of the Danaë myth was not intended for sale and, most likely, was painted for the artist’s home. The mythical heroine’s face was reminiscent of the artist’s wife Saskia. After Rembrandt went bankrupt and was forced to sell all his works and belongings, the painting changed several owners before being bought by Catherine the Great.

In 1985, the painting was seriously damaged after an attack by Bronius Maigys, a Soviet Lithuanian who came to the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) with a vial of acid, a knife, and an explosive device. After slashing Danaë’s face and body with a knife, he poured acid over the painting. Detained by museum guards and visitors, he did not manage to set off the device. Maigys claimed his attack was a patriotic act and a protest against the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. However, his mental instability, history of antisocial behavior, and portraits of Adolf Hitler found in his belongings did not work out well for his public image.

The attack caused severe damage to the painting, as a piece of paint began flaking off its central part right after the contact with acid. To preserve the work, the Hermitage conservators began spraying it with paint almost immediately. The complete restoration and conservation of Danaë took 12 years.

4. Susanna and the Elders

The 1947 painting retold the Biblical story of Susanna, who was almost assaulted by two lustful old men and wrongfully accused of adultery. This was a rather popular artistic subject that often had erotic undertones. Rembrandt avoided excessive sexualizations of Susanna, typical in works on this theme by other artists, instead presenting her as a victim of blackmail and false accusations.

The painting had a surprising collaborator who dramatically transformed the work more than a century after its completion. Sir Joshua Reynolds, one of the most respected and accomplished English Rococo portraitists, was also an avid art collector and admirer of Rembrandt. In the late 18th century, he purchased the painting and redone it, dissolving parts of the image and repainting almost all of its background, leaving only figures intact. Although Reynolds was known for generously retouching works from his vast collection, it is unclear why he went for such a radical intervention into the great master’s work.

5. The Return of the Prodigal Son

The Return of the Prodigal Son is one of the masterpieces of Rembrandt’s late period. At the time, the artist lived in poverty and had to move from his previous home into the poor Jewish quarter on the outskirts of Amsterdam. He lost his popularity as a painter partially because he focused on Biblical scenes which fell out of favor with the general Protestant public.

The story of a Prodigal Son is a story of loss and repentance. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus told the parable of a man who had two sons. The younger son asked to receive his share of the future inheritance and spent it all on travels and superficial pleasures, and after facing poverty and hunger, came back asking for forgiveness. The older son, who remained at their father’s side, judged him, while the father welcomed him back. Rembrandt’s painting retold the moment of the reunion and also suggested that the judgmental attitude of the older son needed healing as much as the reckless behavior of the younger. Most likely, Rembrandt, who went from being a successful rich artist to a weak old man living in poverty, felt connected to the story personally.

6. The Prodigal Son in Tavern (Rembrandt and Saskia)

The Return of the Prodigal Son was neither the only nor the first interpretation of the parable by Rembrandt. Several decades later, Rembrandt, still young and married to his beloved Saskia, painted a portrait of both of them in the parable’s setting. There, young Rembrandt appears as the younger son from the story, entertaining himself at a tavern next to a beautiful young woman. The 1630s were the most successful years in Rembrandt’s life and career, as he achieved significant success as a painter, received commissions, and even accepted students into his workshop.

Rembrandt clearly enjoyed his newfound success but, given the subject of the painting, realized that at some point, he would have to pay for the joys of the moment. The artist illustrated the parable of the prodigal son several times in his career as it was popular among Protestant commissioners for its moralistic value. For several years, Saskia was Rembrandt’s favorite model. At the time of their marriage, Saskia held a much higher social status than Rembrandt but nonetheless insisted on marrying him. Unfortunately, the couple had lost three of four of their children in infancy, and Saskia herself died a year after their youngest son was born.

7. “Christ in the Storm”: The Lost Rembrandt Painting

The only known seascape that Rembrandt ever painted is also one of the works we probably might never see again. Christ in the Storm at the Sea of Galilee was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990 and never located, despite decades-long efforts of the police worldwide. The painting was crudely cut out from its frame and rolled up. Even if the painting still exists physically, most likely the damage caused during the heist and decades of neglect effectively destroyed it beyond restoration.

Like many other works by Rembrandt, The Sea of Galilee featured Rembrandt’s self-portrait, this time as one of Jesus’ disciples. At the time, the artist was just 29 years old. Seascape painting was popular in Rembrandt’s time, as the Netherlands strengthened its power as a colonial empire with developed trade by sea.

Through expanded trade with Qing China from the 16th century, Europe developed a fascination with Chinese culture. This birthed Chinoiserie as a decorative style in the late 17th century, referring to the use of Chinese motifs such as pagodas, dragons, flora, and fauna in Western art. Rococo, with its roots in 18th-century France, is best known for emphasizing ornamentation and elegance. With a shared focus on exuberant decorative elements, Chinoiserie and Rococo have several overlaps. How did these styles develop, and what are the key differences between them?

1. Chinoiserie Predates Rococo

Chinoiserie emerged in the late 17th and early 18th centuries owing to heightened trade and cultural exchanges with China. Derived from the French word chinois, Chinoiserie means “Chinese” or “relating or belonging to China.” An entirely European creation, Chinoiserie was created by Europeans for Europeans, based on how they imagined China or the Far East to be. However, while Chinese-looking motifs featured heavily in European arts, fashion, textiles, ceramics, and décor, they sometimes risked looking stereotypical and even artificial. Nonetheless, during a time when international travel was rare, Europeans indulged in the craze of collecting Chinoiserie—a pastime regarded as a status symbol. European elite, especially women, were known to be avid collectors of Chinoiserie and imported Chinese goods, which adorned tea rooms and dressing rooms.

2. Rococo Came Next

In the early 18th century, somewhere around the 1720s, Rococo came into vogue, originating from France as a reaction to the severity of the Baroque style. Derived from the French word rocaille, which means “rock” or “broken shell,” Rococo features exuberant decoration, asymmetry, and curves. Sometimes perceived as frivolous, it was a style favored by aristocrats. It emphasized natural elements and leisurely pursuits in pastoral, idyllic settings. The style has also been described as theatrical, as Rococo interiors tend to focus on elaborate moldings and gilded accents. Proponents of the Classical styles did not appreciate Rococo, which was seen as superficial, degenerate, and illogical.

3. Chinoiserie Was About an Idealized China

At its core, Chinoiserie was all about the Europeans’ idealized view of China and what they thought China was. What they assumed to be Chinese culture was, in reality, far from the truth. Without the ease of travel and access to knowledge, European designers relied on their imagination and the limited information derived from travelogues and hearsay. This formed a warped, superficial view of China and the Far East, which was often a mish-mash of random Chinese, Indian, and even Japanese elements.

Europeans did not often make the conscious distinction between these individual cultures and centuries-old civilizations. In fact, it was a time when few could pinpoint where these countries were on the world map. Inadvertently, when viewed through the critical lenses of modernity, it is challenging to disassociate Chinoiserie from the broader, more controversial topics of Orientalism and Western imperialism.

4. Rococo Promoted Elegance and Sophisticated Pleasures

On the opposite end of the spectrum lies Rococo, which epitomizes the pleasurable, sometimes removed, lifestyle of 18th-century European elites. Apart from emphasizing exuberant decoration, asymmetry, and curves, a key characteristic of Rococo is its often idealized and idyllic pastoral settings. Rococo works espoused a romanticized notion of rural life, often depicting unrealistic scenes such as elegantly dressed aristocrats seemingly involved in farm work. François Boucher’s work The Love Letter (above) shows two well-dressed women lounging in the lush countryside, enjoying each other’s companionship. They were believed to be shepherdesses, judging from the flock of sheep and the dog nearby. However, as with most Rococo pieces of the time, work was of the least concern as the ladies preferred to occupy themselves with collecting flowers and sending letters.

5. Rococo Motifs Included Shells, Flowers, and All Things Pastoral

Exuding a sense of playfulness and delicacy, Rococo featured motifs such as shells, flowers, ribbons, and vines, usually in a rustic countryside setting. Rural lifestyles were heavily romanticized and completely far from what reality entailed for the masses. In Rococo works, its gardens appeared manicured and ornate, and its shepherds and shepherdesses looked too poised to be working on peasant farms. Apart from the aristocracy, another common subject found in Rococo works were the putti or cherubs, who often appeared as chubby, naked babies, sometimes with wings. They represented innocence, purity, love, and playfulness—all quintessential Rococo elements. L’Amour Moissonneur by François Boucher depicts a group of putti or cherubs in a wheat field as an allegory of summer.

6. Chinoiserie Motifs Included Dragons, Pagodas, and Chinese-Inspired Elements

Common objects found in Chinoiserie included fantastical landscapes, bizarre-looking pavilions, fanciful Chinese pagodas, and a bunch of mythical creatures such as dragons and phoenixes. The abundance of floral motifs, including peonies, azaleas, and chrysanthemums, was also a popular addition. Sometimes, Chinoiserie pieces featured what appeared to be Chinese or Asian-looking figures, which somehow looked rather bizarre or uncanny compared to works originating from China. This, again, goes back to the lack of travel opportunities and access to knowledge. As such, European designers often took traditional Asian or Asian-like symbols and modified the scale and proportion in a bid to accommodate Western tastes and aesthetics.

7. Rococo Declined in the Late 18th Century

Largely depicting the lifestyles of the rich and privileged, Rococo struggled to appeal to the masses. Condemned for its decadence and superficiality, the movement gradually declined towards the end of the century with the emergence of Neoclassicism. Just as Rococo had been a reaction to the severity of Baroque, Neoclassicism was a stark contrast to the excesses and frivolity of Rococo. Depicting subjects associated with Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece, Neoclassicism promoted the principles of simplicity, symmetry, and order. This was in tandem with the Age of Enlightenment, which emphasized morality, reason, and rationality. From the 18th century through to the 21st century, Neoclassical styles have continued to be influential, especially in architecture.

8. Interest in Chinoiserie Waned in the 19th Century

Like its Rococo cousin, Chinoiserie was criticized for lacking in logic and reason. Its association with royalty, such as King Louis XV, made it synonymous with the decadence that was increasingly frowned upon. The absurd inaccuracies in European imitations also angered those who saw them as mocking authentic Chinese culture. More significantly, Chinoiserie fell into decline with the outbreak of the First Opium War in 1839. Fought between Britain and China, the conflict began when the Qing government banned the illegal opium trade, which was the most profitable commodity trade for the British Empire in the 19th century. Heightened political tensions between the two countries had a devastating impact on international trade. This led to restricting Chinese imports, which had long been the key driver of the Chinoiserie craze in Europe.

9. Both Rococo and Chinoiserie Enjoyed a Revival

Less than a century after its decline, Rococo reinvented itself in the 1820s, this time as a movement called Rococo Revival. It sought to revive the 18th-century grandeur and opulence of Rococo but with a modern twist. While semblances of the Rococo Revival style were evident in paintings and decorative objects, the revival focused primarily on furniture and interior design. With the availability of new technology, such as plywood lamination, which used steam and pressure, curves in furniture were achieved more easily. Mahogany and rosewood were also quintessential Rococo Revival elements, accentuating the lavishness that had once taken Europe by storm. However, unlike its predecessor, Rococo Revival was not limited to Europe as its popularity spread and soared in the United States as well between the 1840s and 1860s.

By the start of the 20th century, Chinoiserie was in vogue again. This coincided with the rising influence of Chinese coat designs, characterized by wide sleeves and armholes, in Western fashion trends. Women began ditching the restricting corsets for the emancipating loose tubular dresses popular during the Roaring Twenties. It was a time of increased consciousness with the accelerated momentum of the women’s rights movements. Oriental décor featuring Chinese carpets, red lacquered furniture, Buddha ornaments, scarlet upholstery, and wallpapers also became sought-after interior design choices. Though the 20th century hailed the comeback of Chinoiserie, some have argued that the resurgence was mere nostalgia for simpler, romanticized times. Others believed it was a coping mechanism for the upheavals and political tensions plaguing the Western world then.

Diego Velázquez was a celebrated artist of the Spanish Baroque and one of the most important painters in Spanish history. He was a master of complex compositions and rich colors and was known as King Philip IV’s favorite court painter. His paintings evoke deep admiration but also attracted the attention of art vandals. Read on to learn more about the six famous works by Diego Velázquez.

1. Las Meninas, c. 1656: The Greatest Masterpiece of Diego Velázquez

The most famous and celebrated work by Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas, had a difficult and eventful history. Translated as The Ladies-in-Waiting, it depicted the young Infanta Margarita, the heiress to the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty. What made the painting particularly fascinating was its complex composition: the young Infanta is at once the center of the composition and its external element. Next to her stands Velázquez himself, painting a portrait—but not that of the girl, but of her parents, Philip IV of Spain and Mariana of Austria, whose reflections we can see in a mirror behind the child.

Apart from its immense political power and wealth, the Habsburg royal dynasty was known for its highly questionable ways of keeping said power in the family. For centuries, they married their close relatives, producing children with increasingly grave genetic diseases and deformations. Weak health and various defects greatly decreased the number of children fit for holding any political posts. Margarita’s younger brother Charles II, the last Habsburg monarch in Spain, had only 10 relatives in his fifth generation instead of 32, expected from a regular person with no history of inbreeding.

He also could not close his mouth properly due to a genetic jaw deformity and probably had an intellectual disability. Before Margarita’s birth, her family expected her to be born with similar defects. Although the infanta had weak health, she looked almost angelic, with no visible deformations that ran in her family. This was seen as a miracle in the dynasty.

Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress, by Diego Velázquez, 1659. Source: Wikipedia

Apart from Las Meninas, Velázquez painted five more portraits of Margarita. Almost all of them were created for her future husband, Leopold I, the Holy Roman Emperor, who was both her uncle and cousin. Their marriage was pre-arranged even before the Infanta reached the age of ten, and the official ceremony took place when the king and queen were 26 and 15, respectively. Six years later, Margarita died during her seventh pregnancy.

The famous painting survived several fires and evacuations. The large crowds in the Prado museums also contributed to its destruction; thus, Las Meninas never leaves the museum walls for exhibitions abroad.

2. Philip IV in Brown and Silver, 1631-32

Diego Velázquez had a remarkable career at the Spanish Royal Court. Already in his early 20s, he was an established and well-known painter in his native Seville. At the age of just 24, he was appointed the court painter to Philip IV of Spain, the father of Infanta Margarita, after the previous court painter suddenly died. Velázquez was backed up by Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, the minister who manipulated the King and operated the court.

Philip IV was notoriously easy to influence, perhaps due to his hereditary health issues. Olivares was the de facto ruler of Spain, managing the King’s affairs and running military campaigns and financial reforms. To maintain his position, Olivares separated Philip IV from any possible sources of influence. One of the threats to the minister’s power was the monarch’s wife, Elizabeth of France. Elizabeth was much more intelligent than her husband and understood Olivares’ manipulation. To isolate her from her husband, the minister provided the King with dozens of ministers to keep him busy. After Olivares was removed from his post, Philip IV recognized the ambition and talent of his wife, but it was too late as she soon died as the result of a miscarriage.

Elizabeth rarely posed for Velázquez. Knowing his affiliation with Olivares, she avoided contact with the artist. Philip IV, on the contrary, appeared in the artist’s paintings quite frequently, remaining his patron for almost four decades.

3. The Triumph of Bacchus, 1628-29

By the time Velázquez painted The Triumph of Bacchus, he already worked as a court painter for several years. According to some art historians, at that time, the artist started to receive criticism for his supposed lack of versatility, as if he was only qualified for painting portraits. In The Triumph of Bacchus, he blended together the iconography of a mythological scene with that of genre painting. The source material for the work probably came from the royal art collection of Philip IV. The scene itself represented the god Bacchus offering wine to Spanish laymen, dressed according to the customs of Velázquez’s time. Here, wine is a blessing that allows them to take a break from their hard work and misery. Velázquez designed the composition specifically to include the viewer in the image; two central figures look at us as if inviting us to join their feast.

4. Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, 1618

This early work of Diego Velázquez has already shown his versatility and skill in building complex compositions and multi-faceted relationships between characters. Despite the work’s title, the Biblical episode takes only a small corner of the work, reflected in the mirror. According to the story told in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus arrived at the home of sisters Martha and Mary. Their subsequent conversation focused on the prevalence of spiritual values over physical comfort.

However, the central part of the scene is occupied by the sisters’ maid making garlic sauce for dinner. Behind her is an old woman, giving advice—most likely, she was Velázquez’s relative, as she has previously appeared in his other work titled Old Woman Frying Eggs. Velázquez combined a religious scene with genre painting with a specific Spanish type called bodegon. This term usually refers to still-lifes of kitchens or shops painted on dark backgrounds and representing the everyday activities of ordinary Spanish, like cooking or drinking. They also often included figures of maids, cooks, and street vendors.

5. Rokeby Venus, 1647-51

Apart from painting court portraits, Velázquez occasionally relied on mythological subjects. One of such works was Rockeby Venus, inspired by similar paintings by Peter Paul Rubens and other masters Velázquez admired. Just like in the case of Las Meninas, the artist used a mirror to add complexity to the composition—although Venus is lying with her back to us, we can still see her face in a mirror held by Cupid. However, she is not looking at the reflection, with her face turned in a different direction. The unrealistic curve of her elongated spine makes her an expressive predecessor to Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque. Although the Spanish Inquisition disapproved of the painting of nude figures in Velázquez’s time, this work was requested by Philip IV, so the artist was not afraid of prosecution.

In the centuries following its creation, Rokeby Venus fell victim to activist vandalism twice. The first and most famous incident occurred in 1914 when suffragette Mary Richardson attacked the painting with a meat cleaver. She had two motives: the first one was her annoyance with male visitors who were almost drooling at the work. The second reason was the arrest of the leader of British suffragettes, Emmeline Pankhurst. In retaliation for arresting a politically active woman, the activist wanted to harm the epitome of femininity in the public eye. The painting was successfully restored and covered with protective glass. In 2023, the attack happened again when a group of climate activists shattered the glass with hammers, demanding immediate changes in the fossil fuel industry.

6. Innocent X, c. 1650: The Great Masterpiece of Diego Velázquez

Perhaps the most celebrated artwork by Velázquez that developed a life of its own was his portrait of Pope Innocent X. Some art historians go as far as to consider it the best example of a portrait ever created in the history of art. Pope Innocent X had a rather unflattering reputation and was known for his greed, cruelty, and penchant for intrigues. He was so notorious that the Italian painter Guido Reni gave his facial features to Satan in the scene of his fight with Archangel Michael. Velázquez painted the Pope alert, suspicious, and apparently so realistic that Innocent X refused to exhibit it publicly, displaying it only in front of his family.

The portrait received a new life in the latter half of the 20th century when British artist Francis Bacon encountered it. In the 1950s and 1960s, he painted 45 variations of the portrait, known as The Screaming Pope. The figure’s face was distorted in a horrid scream, unheard, yet still chilling, as if the ugly nature of the sitter suddenly broke loose from behind the respectable facade, tormenting the Pope and causing him unimaginable suffering. Most likely, Bacon blended the figure of Innocent X with another cultural reference he often used: that of a screaming one-eyed nurse from the Soviet silent film Battleship Potemkin.

Théodore Géricault was one of the most famous artists of Romanticism. In 1818, he painted a dramatic scene that was still fresh in his contemporaries’ minds—the shipwreck of the frigate Medusa and the makeshift raft on which part of the crew desperately tried to swim to safety. Exhausted and mentally unstable, the survivors resorted to violence and cannibalism. Géricault’s painting made a sensation in the art world and influenced generations of artists. Read on to learn more about Théodore Géricault’s masterpiece.

The Raft of the Medusa: The Tragedy That Inspired Géricault

The story of one of the most controversial paintings of all time began in 1816, when the French frigate Medusa, under the command of  Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, sailed towards Senegal. France recently received part of its African colonies back after the Napoleonic wars and sent a convoy of ships led by Medusa to re-colonize the land. The captain’s competence quickly raised concerns about the passengers since Chaumareys lost contact with the rest of the convoy and appointed a random passenger as his navigator. The inexperienced navigator failed to calculate the course correctly, and on July 2nd, 1816, Medusa ran into shallow waters.

The captain ordered the evacuation, but the number of lifeboats on the Medusa was insufficient for the amount of people on board. Officers and crew members occupied lifeboats, leaving the remaining 150 people behind. Among them were groups of ordinary men and women who intended to settle in Senegal, as well as low-rank sailors and soldiers. In a desperate attempt to save their lives, they made a makeshift raft big enough to fit all of them. Initially, the raft was tied and pulled by several lifeboats, but upon noticing an approaching storm, the captain ordered the rope to be cut, leaving the raft to drift on its own.

The raft had a very limited and rather odd amount of supplies: not enough water but plenty of wine and almost no food. Alcohol made the situation even worse, as drunk sailors started to fight for places closer to the center in order to avoid being dragged into the water by waves. They also tried to overturn the authority of the remaining officers. Violence and the lack of drinking water soon took effect, with the raft’s population rapidly decreasing.

No special efforts were made to rescue the drifting raft. On July 17th, the brig Argus, searching for the remains of Medusa’s cargo and gold, accidentally discovered the raft. Out of 150 people who boarded in, only 15 were left. A few days before the discovery, they agreed to push everyone who was injured, sick, or insane off the raft. They also threw away the remaining weapons to avoid more violence. By then, desperate people had already resorted to cannibalism and drinking their own urine to stay hydrated.

Soon after the rescue, most of the survivors died from exhaustion. One of the lucky ones was the surgeon Henri Savigny, who managed to write a detailed report about Medusa’s wreck and the events that unfolded on the raft. He highlighted the crucial role of Medusa’s captain Chaumareys in both faulty navigation and abandoning the raft. Chaumareys was an incompetent officer who secured his position not through actual experience but due to his politically favorable views: he was a well-known, staunch supporter of the monarchy, a trait crucial to French governmental institutions still recovering after the Revolution. Chaumareys faced the prospect of the death penalty, but his loyalty to the crown saved him. He was quietly sentenced to three years in prison. Afterward, he retired, in debt, and abandoned by all his ex-colleagues.

The crash of the Medusa and its raft represented more than a tragic but not uncommon shipwreck. It represented the crisis of the French state, where the ruling classes lost all authority. Incompetent captains received their titles because of their political reliability rather than actual qualification, and respectable gentlemen easily turned into murderers and cannibals when left unattended.

Painting “The Raft of the Medusa”

At the time of the Medusa catastrophe, Théodore Géricault was studying painting in Rome. He was desperately looking for a subject dramatic enough to turn into a masterpiece, reading ancient myths and French criminal chronicles. When he discovered Henri Savigny’s report, published as a book, he knew that the search was over. To focus on his work, he stocked art supplies, locked himself in his studio, and shaved his head to avoid the temptation of going out.

Géricault needed time to come up with the definitive composition of The Raft of the Medusa. For a while, he was looking for a precise moment of the tragedy to turn into a painting. He started with the most shocking parts—scenes of cannibalism and drunken fights. However, he soon decided that these scenes were too sensationalist and would turn the dramatic composition into a gory attraction.

Instead, he chose to show the decisive moment in the raft’s story: the second when the few remaining survivors noticed the silhouette of the brig Argus on the horizon. Exhausted, starving, and deeply traumatized, they felt a glimpse of hope, still overwhelmed with anxiety. What if the brig does not notice them? What if it is just a mirage created by their collapsing minds?

To create a more convincing and realistic scene of suffering, Géricault studied anatomy, attended public executions, and visited morgues and hospitals. Bribing assistants in morgues, he even brought body parts like severed heads and legs into his studio to observe their decay. Thankfully, these naturalistic details did not make it into the painting. Géricault’s contemporaries complained that the artist’s studio emitted a horrible, putrid smell that made everyone sick—everyone except Géricault, who was too immersed in his work to even notice.

Géricault & Delacroix

The young aspiring artist Eugene Delacroix was obsessed with Géricault’s art. Despite their age difference, the two artists developed a friendship. Géricault allowed Delacroix to observe him in the studio and even shared some of his commissions, splitting the profits with him.

Géricault had the predominant influence on Eugene Delacroix’s art, with the latter artist adopting similar contrasts and dramatic gestures. In his oeuvre, The Raft of The Medusa found its conceptual twin in the famous painting The Death of Sardanapalus, depicting the final tragic scene legend of the Assyrian King Sardanapalus who ordered the killing of all his slaves and concubines before burning himself on fire to avoid being captured by the enemy. Despite depicting a most likely fictional story, Delacroix retained the same sense of hopelessness and desperation in the face of violence.

Delacroix played a surprising role in creating The Raft of the Medusa. He was one of the models for Géricault, yet he is almost impossible to recognize due to his figure’s position. Delacroix posed as one of the dead bodies, lying face down in the foreground of the painting, with his hand stretched towards the viewers.

Reception of “The Raft of the Medusa”

Géricault presented his work for the first time at the 1819 Paris Salon under the title Shipwreck Scene. The horror and trauma of the Medusa catastrophe were still fresh, and despite the generalized title, viewers could not mistake it for anything else. The rest of the Salon was filled with works glorifying the French monarchy and the state, and some visitors wondered how Géricault’s painting even made it to the show.

Critics noted that instead of exhausted and sick figures, Géricault painted athletes with muscular bodies. This step away from realism turned the painting from documentary evidence into a dramatic work. The size of the painting made the dark composition even more impressive and immersive.

Royalists criticized not only the painting’s message but also its subject matter, which was seen as unworthy of such scale and dramatism. They also criticized Géricault’s compositional choices and color scheme. Conservatives looked for errors in drawing and proportion. At the same time, the pro-Republican opposition eagerly praised the work. Still, the true breakthrough happened during Géricault’s tour to Britain, where he received both praise and financial support. The artist died five years after completing the work, which was soon bought by The Louvre.

In the following decades and centuries, The Raft of the Medusa turned into a prime example of gruesome dramatism and the iconic painted composition. It inspired generations of artists and even filmmakers, including the famous Surrealist Luis Bunuel. References to Géricault can be found in the works of Auguste Rodin and William Turner, among others. The painting also challenged the hierarchy of artistic subjects, being one of the rare instances of contemporary non-heroic events considered worthy of large-scale artwork.