Fray Jaun Andres Rizi - San Benito Dinner

Fray Jaun Andres Rizi - San Benito Dinner, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Fray Jaun Andres Rizi (Madrid, 1600 - Monte Cassino, 1681) was a Spanish painter. In 1628 he entered the Benedictine Order, studied in Salamanca, and became Abbot of the Medina del Campo in Madrid. He afterwards went to Rome, where he was made an Archbishop by pope Clement X. He died at Monte Cassino in 1681.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 185 x 216 cm]

Herman Willem Koekkoek - Mill on the Laan

Herman Willem Koekkoek - Mill on the Laan , a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Herman Willem Koekkoek (Amsterdam, 1867 - Amsterdam, 1929) was a Dutch artist.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art - Oil on wood, 19.1 x 30.5 cm]

Claude Monet - Morning Haze [1894]

Claude Monet - Morning Haze [1894], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 65.7 x 100.3 cm]

Aniello Falcone - Roman Soldiers in the Circus [c.1640]

Aniello Falcone - Roman Soldiers in the Circus [c.1640], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Nacional Museo del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 92 x 183 cm]

Charles Louis-Lucien Muller - Roll Call of the Last Victims of Terror [c.1850]

Charles Louis-Lucien Muller - Roll Call of the Last Victims of Terror [c.1850], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Charles Louis-Lucien Muller (1815 - 1892) was a French painter.

[Art Institute of Chicago, 76.2 x 132 cm]

Goya - Portrait of Joaquina Téllez-Girón y Pimentel, Marchioness of Santa Cruz [1805]

Goya - Portrait of Joaquina Téllez-Girón y Pimentel, Marchioness of Santa Cruz [1805], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The marchioness is shown clad in a very light white dress, lying sideways on a red divan. Her head is decorated with yellow flowers; her left hand is balancing a lyre. Her gaze does not directly fix on the viewer but seems to look distant. Her body does not seem to sit in a natural position, but seemingly floats on the red divan and the pillows. The theme seems almost allegorical, a reference to the ancient Greek theatre. The Prado has exhibited this painting since 1986, after having paid over $6 million to the previous owners.

[Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid - Oil on canvas, 124.7 x 207.7 cm]

Angelica Kauffmann - Portrait of Ferdinand IV, King of Naples andSicily, and His Family

Angelica Kauffmann - Portrait of Ferdinand IV, King of Naples and Sicily, and His Family, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The Princely Collections not only own the sketch but also the modello for Angelika Kauffmann’s monumental painting of King Ferdinand IV of Sicily and Naples and His Family, which is now in the Museo di Capodimonte of Naples. The extraordinarily large finished painting, over four metres wide, hangs in Naples. The life-size figures we find here are those of the king, his consort, Queen Marie Karoline, a daughter of Maria Theresia, and six of her children. The royal family is posed against the background of a park landscape and is dressed accordingly. The bucolic ideal of a rural life and the ideas of the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau both inform this composition, which reflects the corresponding shift of taste among patrons. These no longer desired to have themselves recorded for posterity in the context of their palaces and other imposing residences. They wished to be shown, rather, under God’s open sky. The modello, a later version of the painting most closely resembling the finished composition, in fact includes the ‘ghost’ of a seventh child (this was the short-lived Prince Joseph, who died in 1783); although painted out, he nonetheless remains visible. By comparison with the finished composition, the sketch and the modello, both in the Princely Collections, are distinguished by their directness and liveliness, and it is through these qualities that they provide such a vivid image of the royal family.

[Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna - Oil on canvas, 72 x 100 cm]