Galerie Le Brun

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A man with tanned skin is surrounded by animals as he reclines against a grassy slope in this horizontal landscape painting. The area close to us is darkened or in shadow, so some details are difficult to make out, but the land brightens under a golden sky as it recedes into the deep, hazy distance. In the lower left corner of the canvas, the man faces our right in profile, looking toward the grazing animals. He wears a wide-brimmed hat and a caramel-brown jacket over a knee-length garment. He leans back on his near arm with one leg bent and the other extended. His far hand lies across his torso and holds a short staff. A dark brown goat, tan-colored sheep, and brown and gray cows wander and nibble on muted green, scrubby growth that carpets the hilly ground, which stretches across the center and right side of the composition. Trees with laurel-green canopies grow up beyond the man, and extend off the top edge of the painting. A slender, almost leafless tree frames the scene on the right. Two men walk on a gently arched, stone bridge beyond the spindly tree. Low hills slope down to a misty blue-gray plain, where a river winds along a jagged bank dotted with trees. In the far distance, ghostly buildings stretch along a line of slate-blue mountains. A glowing sun in the upper left corner casts diffused light across the scene. The sky is scattered with wisps of thin clouds.
Anonymous Artist, The Herdsman, 17th or 18th century, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1946.7.12

The Herdsman

Anonymous Artist · 17th or 18th century · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1946.7.12

Shown from the thighs up, a pale-skinned woman looks down and off to our left as she holds the pointed end of a dagger toward her chest in this vertical painting. Her lips are slightly parted, and her arms are spread wide as holds the hilt of the dagger in her right hand, to our left. Her hooded, dark brown eyes are rimmed with red. Her head tilts to our left, her pale lips parted. There are gray shadows at the corners of her mouth and along her jawline. Her brown hair is pulled back under a cloth covering painted with white flecks to suggest shiny thread or possibly jewels. She wears a long, tawny-brown gown with diaphanous sleeves. The bodice is laced up over a cream-white undergarment with a deep V neck and voluminous sleeves with unfastened cuffs near her wrists. She wears a large, teardrop-shaped pearl in the ear we can see and two necklaces. One necklace is a strand of pearls, and the other is a gold and possibly jeweled pendant with another teardrop pearl hanging from a cord. A gold belt drapes around her hips over a narrow waist. She is warmly lit from the upper left and set against an earth-brown background. The artist signed and dated the center left, “Rembrandt 1664.”
Rembrandt van Rijn, Lucretia, 1664, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.76

Lucretia

Rembrandt van Rijn · 1664 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1937.1.76