Provenance

Baron Joseph van der Elst

Belgian, 1896 - 1971

Explore Selected Works

Shown from the waist up, a woman holds a nude infant in this vertical painting. Both have pale, peach-toned skin with brown eyes, faint eyebrows, and delicate features. The woman’s full, pink lips are closed, and she has a pointed chin. Her wavy, reddish-blond hair is parted in the middle and falls behind her shoulders. She wears a dark blue robe with a narrow gold border draped over her head and around her shoulders and body. She looks down at the child, to our right, which she holds in both long-fingered hands on a white cloth. The baby’s head is covered with a fine fuzz. He looks off to the left and grips the white cloth with the hand closer to the woman. His other hand rests on his round belly. The woman’s right hand wraps across one tiny leg, and the other foot stretches out over that wrist. The background is dark brown, and cracking on the painting’s surface is visible throughout.
Dirck Bouts, Madonna and Child, c. 1465, oil on panel, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1986.67.1

Madonna and Child

Dirck Bouts · c. 1465 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1986.67.1

A naked man with ghostly white skin sits upright in a canopied bed set in a narrow room in this tall, vertical painting. Wearing a black cap, he looks to our left in profile toward a skeleton who comes through a door along the left edge of the composition. The man gestures at the skeleton with one hand and, with the other, toward a bag of money held up by a small demon next to the bed to our left. The skeleton wears a white shroud and holds an arrow. A winged angel kneels next to the man in the bed, one hand on the man’s shoulder and the other lifted to gesture at a crucifix hanging in the window over the door. A small devil on the canopy above looks down onto the bed. At the foot of the bed, a man wearing a green robe and headdress drops coins into a sack held by another demon. Three more demons crawl about and hide under the chest. Pieces of armor and weapons lie on the ground to the right in front of a stone ledge in the foreground. Two pieces of clothing drape over the ledge to our left.
Hieronymus Bosch, Death and the Miser, c. 1485/1490, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.33

Death and the Miser

Hieronymus Bosch · c. 1485/1490 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1952.5.33