Provenance

Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd.

Christie & Manson
Christie's
Christie's, London
Private Collection c/o Christie's London

est. 1766

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This painting is a portrait of a person depicted from the waist up, turned slightly to the right with one hand raised to their chest. The person has pale skin, rosy cheeks, a thin mustache, and long, curly brown hair. They are wearing a loose, long-sleeved blue garment on top of a billowing white shirt. The background features a dark interior space with an arched window on the right, through which a landscape with trees and a distant spire is visible under a blue sky.
Ary de Vois, The Artist as Lover, c. 1660s, oil on copper, Nell and Robert Weidenhammer Fund, 2025.37.1

The Artist as Lover

Ary de Vois · c. 1660s · oil on copper ·  Accession ID  2025.37.1

Christo, Yellow Store Front, 1965, wood, Plexiglas, fabric, brown paper, galvanized metal, pegboard, corrugated cardboard, and electric light, Gift of Jeanne-Claude Christo-Javacheff Trust, 2023.79.1

Yellow Store Front

Christo · 1965 · wood, Plexiglas, fabric, brown paper, galvanized metal, pegboard, corrugated cardboard, and electric light ·  Accession ID  2023.79.1

Shown from the knees up, a woman with smooth, pale skin and rosy cheeks wears a satin gown and densely pleated, wide collar in this vertical portrait painting. She stands with her body angled to our left but turns to look at us from the corners of her luminous brown eyes. She has curved, black brows, a straight nose, and her strawberry-red, bow-shaped lips turn up in a slight smile. Her honey-brown hair is tightly curled under an elaborate pearl, gold, and feather headdress in the shape of a bouquet of flowers. The pearl earring in the ear we can see rests against the lace-edged ruff, which presses up against the back of her head and extends to the width of her shoulders. She wears a long-sleeved, champagne-white satin gown trimmed with gold and jewels. A white satin cloak with amber-gold lining falls open from the elbow of each sleeve. The cuffs are edged with layers of narrow lace, and she holds a mostly closed fan in her right hand, farther from us. Both arms hang by her sides. Behind her head and shoulders, cranberry-red drapery billows down from above over forest-green marble columns. Light shines from our left, illuminating a brown pillar and mantel behind the woman, along the left side of the canvas.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria, 1606, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.60

Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria

Sir Peter Paul Rubens · 1606 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1961.9.60

We look across an expanse of a flat, grassy lawn at the towering spire of a stone church outlined against billowing clouds in this horizontal landscape painting. The lawn is dappled with light filtering through a line of trees with thick, green canopies to our left. The trees take up almost the left half of the composition, and they line a dirt path where three people walk. Tiny in scale, the people are painted with strokes of slate blue, red, white, and black. A few animals, perhaps cows, graze on the lawn near more trees on the far side of the green. Beyond the trees, the church sits on the horizon, which comes about a quarter of the way up the composition. Minuscule touches of yellow, black, and red may suggest more people in the deep distance. The pale blue sky is nearly filled with puffy parchment-white and mauve-tinged clouds.
John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from Lower Marsh Close, 1820, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.108

Salisbury Cathedral from Lower Marsh Close

John Constable · 1820 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1937.1.108

A balding, bare-chested man with a long white beard kneels on a dirt ground to our right in front of a rocky cave opening in this vertical painting. The man holds a rock in one hand and looks up at a man hanging on a cross to the left. The kneeling man, Saint Jerome, has peach-colored skin and a fringe of gray hair. He has a rounded nose, deep-set eyes, a prominent brow, hollow cheekbones, and his lips are parted to reveal two teeth. His body is angled to our left, and he looks up in that direction with blue eyes. His sleeveless, long, powder-blue garment is taken off one shoulder to reveal his chest, and one bare foot sticks out under the hem of the robe behind him. A lion lies under the cave opening, which towers over Saint Jerome and continues off the top edge of the painting. The crucifix is opposite Saint Jerome. The haloed, mostly nude man hanging on the cross is about half the size of Saint Jerome, and has pale skin, brown hair, and a white loincloth across his hips. The wooden cross is braced by rocks. A black snake emerges from a crevice near the base of the cross and appears to head for Saint Jerome. A vivid blue river is glimpsed just beyond this rocky bit of land. Trees and a hill on the far side frame a deep, grassy expanse that leads back to a walled town and pale blue mountains along the horizon. A few white clouds skim across a pale blue sky in the top left quadrant of the painting. The artist signed the work as if he had written his name on a scroll of paper propped up in front of Saint Jerome’s knee, in the bottom right corner of the painting: “Joannis b pt C.”
Cima da Conegliano, Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, c. 1500/1505, oil on panel transferred to canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.168

Saint Jerome in the Wilderness

Cima da Conegliano · c. 1500/1505 · oil on panel transferred to canvas ·  Accession ID  1939.1.168

From high above the earth, we look onto a dramatically lit scene with a man falling from a horse-drawn chariot in midair, surrounded by eleven women against a bank of clouds in this horizontal painting. All of the people have pale skin and are illuminated by a bright burst of sunlight streaming across the scene from the upper right corner. The man is covered only by a burgundy-red sash that wraps across his groin and around one shoulder. He careens headfirst from the U-shaped, golden chariot with his chest facing us, arms flung overhead and legs splayed, to our right of center. The tumble of bodies around him includes four horses, three ivory white and one gray, and the eleven women, who are either nude or dressed in robes of parchment white, tan, slate blue, butterscotch yellow, steel gray, or rose pink. The women all have blond or brown hair, and some have wings like butterflies, patterned with circles and stripes. They fall alongside the man or float above the wreckage, their robes and hair billowing. Some of the women hold the red reins of the horses, though some of the reins stop abruptly or are painted over so they appear as dark lines beneath the surface. The nickel-gray clouds surround and support some of the women in front of a hazy circular arch curving up the left side of the composition. Peeks of sky around the action are deep aqua blue, and vibrant orange flames lick up from the earth in the lower right.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens, The Fall of Phaeton, c. 1604/1605, probably reworked c. 1606/1608, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1990.1.1

The Fall of Phaeton

Sir Peter Paul Rubens · c. 1604/1605, probably reworked c. 1606/1608 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1990.1.1

Giovanni Battista Foggini, Vittoria della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, c. 1690, marble, Widener Collection, 1942.9.130

Vittoria della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany

Giovanni Battista Foggini · c. 1690 · marble ·  Accession ID  1942.9.130

Beyond several craggy boulders that loom in the lower left corner of this horizontal painting, three sailing ships pitch wildly in crashing waves beneath towering clouds. At the center, a large ship tips sharply to our right with billowing ivory sails and two red, white, and blue striped flags whipping in the wind. White spray kicks up against the side of the boat and in the waves surrounding it. The sails of the second ship, to our right, are furled except for one that crashes down onto the deck. Tiny people scurry around inside the ship, which tilts steeply up on a high wave. The third ship floats beyond this, its sails also tied up. The top of a tall wooden mast along with a broken wooden pole poke up from emerald-green waves in the lower right corner, near a barrel and two bundles wrapped in cloth and tied with rope that bob nearby. One of the brown, jagged rocks to our left nearly spans the height of the painting while others jut from the water like crooked teeth. A bank of billowing, slate-gray clouds at the center of the sky separates a fog-gray sky and puffy clouds to our right from a patch of golden sunlight to our left, in the upper corner of the canvas. The artist signed and dated the work as if written on a rock at the bottom center of the canvas, “LBackh 1667.”
Ludolf Backhuysen, Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast, 1667, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1985.29.1

Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast

Ludolf Backhuysen · 1667 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1985.29.1

This painting shows a person standing on a small rectangular platform, with one knee slightly bent and the heel of that foot raised off of the ground. The person has pale skin with rosy cheeks, arched eyebrows, brown eyes with dark lashes, small lips in a neutral expression, and long, wavy yellow hair. They are wearing a red robe with a knot around the neckline and a green sash with gold designs around the waist. They are barefoot, and their left hand is on their hip while the other is holding a black staff with gold details at the top, bottom, and middle. The background features a green landscape with buildings, small trees, and a distant body of blue water. There is a gray building on the right, and in front there are two people, one seeming to chase the other. There are more people on the left, including one person who is being restrained by two other people, with a third person holding a sword over them. The people wear clothes in shades of pink, red, green, and silvery gray. The sky above is pale blue. The top of the painting is arched.
Master of the Griselda Legend, Joseph of Egypt, c. 1490/1495, oil on panel transferred to canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.2

Joseph of Egypt

Master of the Griselda Legend · c. 1490/1495 · oil on panel transferred to canvas ·  Accession ID  1952.5.2

A nearly nude, muscular man with pale, peachy skin sits in an underground cave among seven male and two female lions in this horizontal painting. The man sits to our right of center with his legs crossed, elbows close to his body with hands clasped by his chest. His head tips back to look up through a small opening above. He has long, wavy, chestnut-brown hair and dark eyes. A white cloth wraps across his hips, and he sits on a scarlet-red swath of fabric draped up over a rock next to him. The nine lions stalk, sit, or lie down around the man. One male lion next to the man, to our left, opens his mouth with his head thrown back, curling tongue extended beyond long fangs. A human skull and other bones are strewn on the dirt ground close to us. The rocky cave curves up around the animals and man to a narrow, round opening showing blue sky above.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Daniel in the Lions' Den, c. 1614/1616, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1965.13.1

Daniel in the Lions' Den

Sir Peter Paul Rubens · c. 1614/1616 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1965.13.1

Bibliography

1926

  • Mariller, H.C. Christie's: 1766-1925. London, 1926

1996

  • Lacy, Robert. "A Grand Old Rivalry." Vanity Fair January 1996:107+