Maisie Shainwald Dreicer Whyte de Kerchove

American, 1889 - 1976

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A woman wearing a breastplate and helmet over a toga stands to our left on a platform, gesturing with one arm extended to a group of about a dozen soldiers gathered around her in this horizontal painting. The woman has pale white skin and most of the soldiers have ruddy complexions. The woman stands with her body facing us but she turns her head to our right, looking toward but not at the knot of soldiers clustered there. She leans on her right elbow, on our left, resting on the flat top of a broken column, and she holds a scepter in that hand. Her other arm is raised and her fingers are extended except for the index finger and thumb, which touch to make a circle. Her gold helmet is encrusted with gems and a white plume issues from the top. Her red and gold cloak is fastened around her neck and falls open to reveal her armor and sandal-clad feet. A shield rests on the platform near her feet, and other pieces of armor are scattered on the dirt ground near the platform. A young boy with chestnut-brown curls holds her cloak behind her and to our right. In the lower left corner of the painting, one soldier sits on the edge of the platform, and he twists and looks up at the woman. Several soldiers standing in a group to our right carry shields, banners, and halberds, which are tall, ax-like weapons. The men wear helmets and breastplates, and cloaks in canary yellow, crimson red, and ivory white. The man closest to us stands with his back to us, and he looks over his shoulder at the woman. An animal skin wraps around his shoulders and the head of the animal drapes over his head. More soldiers and tents in the middle distance are painted in almost monochromatic tones of peanut brown and taupe. The sky above is blue with a few white clouds, except for a band of soft yellow along the horizon.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Queen Zenobia Addressing Her Soldiers, 1725/1730, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.42

Queen Zenobia Addressing Her Soldiers

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo · 1725/1730 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1961.9.42

A young woman sitting with a nude infant lying in her lap is flanked on either side by an older woman to our left and an elderly man with a nude young boy to our right in this vertical painting. They all have pale skin tinged with blue. At the center, the young woman, Mary, is draped in a cobalt-blue mantle that partially covers her head and falls to her shoulders to wrap around a dusky rose-pink gown. The mantle is pushed back from one side of her head, revealing dark brown hair. Her right arm embraces the shoulders of the old woman standing next to her, to our left, who leans toward Mary. A tangerine-orange cloak wraps around the older woman and her hair is covered by a white cowl. Both women have long faces and noses with deep set eyes under thick arched brows, and they gaze down at the infant. The mostly bald, pudgy baby lies across a white piece of fabric, two corners of which are held up by the older woman. Another young boy stands alongside Mary to our right. He faces us, holding a basket or glass bowl containing oval-shaped caramel-brown objects the size of figs in one hand. His elongated head is crowned with tawny brown hair, and his face turns away from the infant to gaze off to our right. One finger of his left hand, on our right, rests alongside his rose-red lips. The elderly man stands behind him, leaning over Mary’s shoulder to look at the older woman. We see him from the waist up with a golden-yellow cloak layered over an olive-green vest, and the arm we see is clad in a white sleeve. The group takes up most of the height of the composition and are crowded together against an azure-blue sky swirling with thin gray and white clouds. The scene is painted largely with long strokes of saturated color. The dark gray ground below is painted with sketchy strokes of white, blue, and pink.
El Greco, The Holy Family with Saint Anne and the Infant John the Baptist, c. 1595/1600, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1959.9.4

The Holy Family with Saint Anne and the Infant John the Baptist

El Greco · c. 1595/1600 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1959.9.4

Shown from the shoulders up, a man with peachy skin looks off to our left as he holds the feathered end of an arrow up in a hand resting along the bottom edge of this vertical portrait painting. Shown against a marine-blue background, he looks into the distance with hazel eyes under bushy eyebrows. He has a long, bumped nose, and his full, pale pink lips are closed. His round cheeks are tinged with pink, and there is a hint of a five-o-clock shadow around his mouth and jawline. Chestnut-brown, curly hair hangs to the base of his neck, and wispy curls fall across his forehead from under his tall, chocolate-brown cap. The cap has a small gold pin high over the ear we can see. The man wears a garnet-red jacket with a black collar over a white collarless shirt decorated with five black, narrow bands below the neckline. The fingers of his right hand, to our left, rest with the fingertips braced along on the bottom edge of the painting, as if along a ledge. He pinches the shaft of an arrow with his index finger and thumb, so we see the sienna-brown feathers. He wears a gold ring embedded with a small blue gem near the first knuckle of his ring finger.
Hans Memling, Portrait of a Man with an Arrow, c. 1470/1475, oil on panel, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.42

Portrait of a Man with an Arrow

Hans Memling · c. 1470/1475 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1937.1.42