Provenance

Arthur L. Nicholson

British

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Nine women and girls create a procession leading to a blond, smiling infant lying in a basket being held by a man next to a riverbank that runs across this horizontal landscape painting. The tallest woman, near the center of the retinue, wears a gold, crown-like diadem, and a toga-like gown of golden yellow over a pale, slate-blue, short-sleeved dress. She stands facing our left in profile, and looks toward the baby with dark eyes under dark, arched eyebrows. Her nose is long and straight, her pink lips are closed in a faint smile, and she has a rounded chin and jawline. Her wavy, dark blond hair is braided and pulled back, and she wears a gold earring on the ear we can see. She reaches her right arm, farther from us, straight in front of her with her palm facing the ground. Three women and three girls trail behind her in a row to our right. They wear brightly colored wraps and robes in rose pink, topaz or cobalt blue, plum purple, butter yellow, or ivory white. Most look toward the baby but the girl at the back offers the woman in front of her a tiny bouquet of flowers. Two women to our left of the standing woman stoop to reach out to the basket, held by a muscular, bare-chested, bearded man. Gray, stone blocks of a wall create steps to our left and behind it, a younger, cleanshaven man, also bare-chested, and with shoulder-length, strawberry-blond hair, reaches for his marigold-orange clothing. Trees lining the far riverbank and the brilliant blue sky with steel-gray clouds are reflected in the water’s surface. Across the river to our left, beyond a ruined stone abutment, a man in a red toga, and one in yellow, look on. More people work along the opposite bank. A city built of light gray stone stretches into the deep distance beyond.
Sébastien Bourdon, The Finding of Moses, c. 1655/1660, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.65

The Finding of Moses

Sébastien Bourdon · c. 1655/1660 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1961.9.65

A man draped in a white cloth steps toward us onto a ledge as he holds a red staff with a white banner in one hand and holds up the other hand to show a wound on the palm in this vertical painting. His pale face has a yellow cast but he has rosy cheeks, and his body is eggshell white. Near the upper left corner of the painting, his raised right hand, to our left, is held palm out to show it has been pierced. The cardinal-red staff he supports in his other hand has a long, fluttering banner with a red cross against a white background. He bends his right knee deeply, so his bare foot rests on a low wall or side of a casket in front of him. He looks up with brown eyes under curved eyebrows. He has a straight nose, and his small, rose-pink mouth is closed. He has shoulder-length, brown curly hair and a forked beard. His voluminous ivory-white cloth drapes over one shoulder and hangs in deep folds across the arm holding the banner and the opposite knee. He has a bloody gash over his right ribs. His entire body is surrounded by radiating lines encompassed in a glowing, golden halo. The corners around the halo are celestial blue. The ledge where he props his foot is painted to look like yellow marble veined with gray, framed with fawn-brown molding along the top edge. A round, black medallion flecked with celery green at the front center of the panel is also surrounded with with brown molding.
Bergognone, Christ Risen from the Tomb, c. 1490, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.1

Christ Risen from the Tomb

Bergognone · c. 1490 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1952.5.1

The head and pale face of a bearded man with a ring of interwoven branches of thorns over his chin-length, wavy, reddish-brown hair floats against a white cloth that has been hung over a wooden rod in this vertical painting. The cloth fills the composition. At its center, the man’s head faces us and he looks down with heavy-lidded, brown eyes. His lips are parted, and his cheeks are slightly sunken and shaded with pale lilac purple under high cheekbones. Blood drips down the man’s pallid forehead from the thorns. A brown spot high on his right cheek, on our left, might be a bruise or injury. A soft brown glow surrounds the head. The white cloth is frayed along its front edge, where it rests facing us on a wooden surface along the bottom edge of the painting. The cloth is bunched a little to each side where it drapes over the wooden rod above. The white cloth is painted with tones of pale coral pink, icy blue, silvery white, and dove gray. The background behind the cloth is black.
Domenico Fetti, The Veil of Veronica, c. 1618/1622, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.7

The Veil of Veronica

Domenico Fetti · c. 1618/1622 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1952.5.7