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A nude man holding a book in one hand and a rock down by his other side kneels at the opening of a rocky cave in this vertical painting. The man’s body and the shadowy cave opening nearly fill the composition. The man’s torso and limbs are elongated and sinewy, and his skin is painted in tones of ivory white and pale peach with smoky gray shadows. His body is squared to us as he turns his long face to look up and off to our left. He has dark brows over deep-set eyes, a prominent nose, hollow cheeks, and his thin lips are closed. He has short white hair and a frost-white beard. His skin pulls tightly over the tendons in his neck, across his collarbone, and over his ladder-like ribcage. He is nude except for a loosely painted, light-colored cloth across his hips. His left arm, to our right, lies along an open book, which rests against his hip or on a rock in the cave. A few touches of red line the hand that grips the rock, which he holds away from his body with his other hand. The craggy face of the cave opening is loosely painted, and the interior is swallowed in complete darkness. The man raises his face toward rays of canary yellow and cotton white against a turquoise-blue sky in the upper left corner of the canvas.
El Greco, Saint Jerome, c. 1610/1614, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1943.7.6

Saint Jerome

El Greco · c. 1610/1614 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1943.7.6

We look across a rutted, dirt road at a rickety wooden gate that leans precipitously to our right, at the same angle as the bare tree behind it in this horizontal landscape painting. The road curves from the lower right corner to the center of the composition, and continues back over a low rise. The gate leans back at an angle next to the road, near the lower right center of the painting. An area in shadow to our right could be the fence continuing along in front of a building with a sloping, moss-green roof that echoes the angle of the gate and tree. The bare branches of the tree twist into the sky from the leaning trunk. A tuft of laurel-green trees peeks up over the road where it passes through the gate. There is a fence post and scrubby bush on the left side of the road. Closer inspection reveals a few people, loosely painted, tucked into the landscape with one to our right of the tree and two just over the hill beyond the gate. A few swipes of white near that pair could be sheep or other animals walking along the road in front of them. Finally, a person, notably tiny in scale so out of proportion to the rest of the scene, stands holding a staff in the shadow cast by the gate. The sky above has white and straw-yellow clouds sweeping up from the horizon, which comes a quarter of the way up the composition, against a dove-gray sky.
Pieter Molijn, Landscape with Open Gate, c. 1630/1635, oil on panel, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund and Gift of Arthur K. and Susan H. Wheelock, 1986.10.1

Landscape with Open Gate

Pieter Molijn · c. 1630/1635 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1986.10.1

Alfredo Pina, Richard Wagner, model 1916, bronze, Gift of Frank Anderson Trapp, 2004.166.31

Richard Wagner

Alfredo Pina · model 1916 · bronze ·  Accession ID  2004.166.31

Aimé-Jules Dalou, The Binder (Le botteleur), model c. 1894, cast c. 1907/1934, bronze, Gift of Frank Anderson Trapp, 2004.166.8

The Binder (Le botteleur)

Aimé-Jules Dalou · model c. 1894, cast c. 1907/1934 · bronze ·  Accession ID  2004.166.8