Images Dated 19th September 2005

'The Entourage of Cleopatra', 1746-47. Artist: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

'The Entourage of Cleopatra', 1746-47. One of the most important commissions carried out by Tiepolo in the 1740s was, without a doubt, the decoration of the Palazzo Labia in Venice. Tiepolo's scenes, The Meeting of Anthony and Cleopatra and The Banquet of Cleopatra, are staged within an illusory architecture, the scenic framework lending them a theatrical character. The two female servants with the dog are typical secondary figures, used time and again by Tiepolo in numerous works to enrich the main action

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'Wheatfield with Crows', (detail) 1890. Artist: Vincent van Gogh

'Wheatfield with Crows', (detail) 1890. In Auvers, Van Gogh painted a large number of landscapes with wheatfields, all on unusual, elongated canvases (50 x 100 cm). He wrote to Theo about two of these works: They depict vast, distended wheatfields under angry skies, and I deliberately tried to express sadness and extreme loneliness in them. But these pictures also had a positive side: I am almost certain that these canvases illustrate what I cannot express in words, that is, how healthy and reassuring I find the countryside. Painted in the last weeks of his life. From the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

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'Allegory of the Faith', c1670. Artist: Jan Vermeer

'Allegory of the Faith', c1670. Vermeer's source derives from a standard handbook of iconography, Cesare Ripa's Iconologia. Vermeer interpreted Ripa's description of Faith with the world at her feet literally, showing a Dutch globe published in 1618. The divine world is rendered as a glass sphere reflecting the room. The painting of the Crucifixion on the wall copies a work by Jacob Jordaens. Among the many Christological symbols, the most prominent are the apple, emblem of the first sin, and the serpent (Satan) crushed by a stone (Christ, the cornerstone of the Church). Dating about 1670, the work strikes a balance between abstraction and haunting similitude. From the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, U.S.A

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