Robert Fagan

British, c. 1761 - 1816

Explore Selected Works

Shown from the knees up, a light-skinned man wearing a loose, ink-black garment with a white collar leans back in a wooden chair in this vertical portrait painting. His body faces our left almost in profile, but he turns his head to look at us from the corners of his light hazel-brown eyes, the eyebrow closer to us slightly cocked. Crow’s feet line the corners of his hooded eyes. He is lit from our right so the side of his face to our left is in shadow. His slightly hollow cheeks are lined between his nose and mouth with wrinkles. His silvery-gray beard is trimmed close to his angled jawline and pointed chin. His gray hair is closely cropped hair under a velvety-black, three-pointed cap. The white collar is trimmed with stripes and a row of delicate dots along the edge. The man leans heavily against his left arm, closer to us, which is stretched along the arm of the chair to nearly span the width of the painting. That hand curls around the terminal of the chair, which is carved with a stylized flower in a disk. He wears a gold ring with a dark blue stone on the pinky of that hand. He marks the spot in a closed book with his other hand, and rests the book in the crook of the elbow draped along the arm of the chair. The book he holds has a sand-brown cover, and is about the size of a thick paperback novel. The crimson-red lining along the back of the chair, to our right, and the cushion on which the man sits is trimmed with rows of fringe of the same color. The background behind the man is deep, sable brown in the corners and lightens to tan around the man’s head.
Giovanni Battista Moroni, "Titian's Schoolmaster", c. 1575, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.45

"Titian's Schoolmaster"

Giovanni Battista Moroni · c. 1575 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1942.9.45

A woman, Mary, sits surrounded by winged angels on a bank of clouds above a second woman who prays in front of a vast landscape in this vertical, arched painting. The women and angels all have pale skin and rosy cheeks. Mary and the angels take up the top two-thirds of the composition. Mary’s body is angled to our left, but she turns her face to us as she looks up. She wears a flax-yellow veil under an azure-blue mantle, which drapes over her shoulders and her ruby-red dress. Her hands are together in prayer, and her body, including one bare foot, is supported by the angels. Two older angels, like young adults, are at Mary’s feet and they look down. Both have long, wavy blond hair, and they wear robes in grass green or rust red. Two nude, child-like angels are to either side of Mary’s hips. Sixteen baby heads with blond hair and wings alongside their ears are nestled in the smoky-violet clouds around Mary. This group is lit brightly from our left but also backlit by the ring of angel heads. The older woman in the lower left corner of the composition wears a translucent veil and white head covering as she looks up, her hands also in prayer and holding a rosary. Her cheeks and jowls sag, and she wears a black dress. The grassy, shadowed landscape extends into the deep distance to a cluster of buildings in the lower right corner of the painting. Beyond the woman and smaller in scale, a man wearing a yellow cloak over a red robe reaches toward or releases a green snaking shape, perhaps a strip of fabric.
Girolamo da Carpi, The Apparition of the Virgin, 1530/1540, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.382

The Apparition of the Virgin

Girolamo da Carpi · 1530/1540 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.382