Provenance

William Cornwallis Cornwallis-West

British, 1835 - 1917

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Two women stand clasping hands between two seated men, all against a deep landscape with hills and a town in this nearly square painting. Dozens of people are gathered in the town to our right, and several cluster in front of a building to our left. All the people have pale, peachy skin. Close to us, the two women both have translucent, plate-like halos. They stand with their bodies angled toward each other, and they look at each other. The woman to our left, Mary, has smooth skin with a delicate profile. She wears a gold-edged, ultramarine-blue robe lined with forest green over a long-sleeved, ruby-red dress. Sandaled toes peek under the hem. An eggshell-white and gold scarf drapes over her blond hair, which is pulled back, and over her shoulders. Leaning toward her companion, Mary gazes directly into the eyes of the older woman, Elizabeth. They clasp their right hands, and Mary touches Elizabeth’s shoulder. They stand close together, so only a sliver of the background landscape is visible between their cloaks. Elizabeth wears a maroon-red dress mostly covered by a wine-red cloak that wraps around her body. Her opaque, white scarf drapes over her head and ties loosely on her chest. Her free, left hand is raised, the palm facing Mary. The women stand on a slightly raised platform as the elderly men sit on either side, their bodies angled toward the women. Both men have faint, barely visible halos floating over their balding heads. They have fringes of gray hair and long, gray beards. Their foreheads are deeply lined with wrinkles, and they look down long, straight noses at their laps. To our left, the man wears a scarlet-red cloak over a harvest-yellow garment with gray sleeves. He hunches over a book in his lap. Three gold balls lie next to him, near Mary’s feet. On our right, the second man wears black, round spectacles perched on his nose. The hood of his black robe lies across his shoulders, over an olive-green cape. The cape has gold trim, and the underside is scarlet red. He writes on a narrow piece of parchment with a quill on a closed, blue-covered book. He braces the book and an ink pot with one hand, and a leather pouch hangs from a cord in that hand. At his feet lie an iron-colored bell, a wooden cane, and a brown book. A single sprig of garnet-red flowers lies on the stone floor between the two men. Beyond the four people, the sand-colored land dips down between the town to our right and the building to our left. Dozens of women holding babies struggle against men with swords on a platform in the town. Four people look on from windows above, and buildings continue into the distance along high, steep hills. One of the buildings there is topped by a cross, and the side of that structure is painted with a scene showing a kneeling, winged angel holding a white lily toward a woman dressed in green, who kneels and crosses her arms over her chest. To our left and deep in the shadow cast by a tall building there, a woman and several men gather and some kneel around a baby. Beyond, the land extends to body of vivid blue water, which leads back to a pale blue mountain in the deep distance. A few puffy clouds float across the sky above, which deepens from powder blue along the top edge to nearly white along the horizon.
Piero di Cosimo, The Visitation with Saint Nicholas and Saint Anthony Abbot, c. 1489/1490, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.361

The Visitation with Saint Nicholas and Saint Anthony Abbot

Piero di Cosimo · c. 1489/1490 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.361

A winged angel leads a clean-shaven young man across a landscape in this vertical painting. The angel and man nearly fill the composition. They both have pale skin slightly tinged with green, rosy cheeks, copper-blond curly hair, fluttering robes, and halos. Their jaws are rounded, and their full lips closed. They each step forward onto one foot. To our left, the angel’s head turns back with eyes downcast or closed. The angel’s sky-blue robe is gathered up around the waist and falls to the ankles. The neckline and bottom hem are edged with gold writing, and the halo is a gold ring filled in with gold dots. The angel holds a gold vessel or object in the right hand, farther from us, and reaches the other arm slightly back. The man, Tobias, leans forward and reaches one arm to hook wrists with the angel. A scroll curls down from Tobias’s wrist. He tips his head to our left and looks up with large, light brown eyes. He wears a rose-pink robe over a powder-blue tunic. The robe also has gold lettering around the lower hem, and he wears matching pink stockings and shin-high, golden-yellow boots. He carries a fish hanging from a gold thread with his other hand. Gold rays radiate around his head like a starburst. A small, shaggy white dog looks at the ground to our left of the angel’s feet. Some forest-green shrubs and spindly trees with sage-green canopies grow on the far side of the path. Water winds into the distance to meet white buildings along the right edge of the composition. More trees and a steeple are hazy blue in the distance along the horizon, which comes about halfway up the painting. The sky is streaked with white and ice blue.
Filippino Lippi, Tobias and the Angel, c. 1475/1480, oil and tempera on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.229

Tobias and the Angel

Filippino Lippi · c. 1475/1480 · oil and tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.229