Marqués de Salamanca

Spanish, 1805 - 1866

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A man bows to a woman as another man looks on from the shadowy background, while a woman sitting at a table plays a lute in this vertical painting. All the people have pale skin. The bowing man enters from an open door to our left. He faces our right in profile and has a bumped nose, a dark mustache, and his brown hair falls loosely over his shoulders. He wears a voluminous, black jacket that has a wide white collar and flat, plate-like, starched white cuffs. He bends forward with one foot stretched in front of him, as he gazes at the woman to our right. His hands are spread wide. His left forefinger and thumb touch to make an O shape, and he holds a wide-brimmed, black hat in his right hand, closer to us. At the center of the composition, the woman wears a dress with a coral-pink bodice and a cream-white satin skirt trimmed with gold down the front and around the hem. She faces our left in profile and looks at the man, her cheeks flushed. Her eyebrows are slightly raised over dark eyes, and she has a straight nose and the hint of a double chin. Her blond hair is pulled back under a lace covering, and curls frame her face. A black ribbon is tied into a bow at the shoulder closer to us. A brown and white dog, about knee-high, stands between the man and woman. To our right, a young woman sits at the far side of a table playing a lute. She wears a sapphire-blue dress and looks down at her instrument. One elbow is propped on the patterned rug that covers the table. A second instrument, perhaps a cello, lies on the table, and a wooden chair with a pine-green upholstered seat has been pulled up to our side of the table. Almost lost in the shadows at the back of the room between the two women, a man with a goatee and wearing a brown jacket and trousers stands with his body angled to our right as he looks over his shoulder at the couple at the door. He stands in front of a fireplace with an opening so large that the mantle is supported by columns as tall as the man.
Gerard ter Borch the Younger, The Suitor's Visit, c. 1658, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.58

The Suitor's Visit

Gerard ter Borch the Younger · c. 1658 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1937.1.58

Dosso Dossi, The Trojans Building the Temple to Venus and Making Offerings at Anchises's Grave in Sicily, c. 1520, oil on canvas, Purchased as the Gift of Anonymous, 2021.6.1

The Trojans Building the Temple to Venus and Making Offerings at Anchises's Grave in Sicily

Dosso Dossi · c. 1520 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2021.6.1

On the right side of this horizontal painting, two light-skinned men stand close to us on a spit of land separated from the rest of the scene by stretch of water that leads back to a town on the far shore. People gather on and around two boats floating in the water between the spit of land to our right and a copse of trees to our left. Beginning with the pair of men to our right: one man looking toward us has a broad forehead and grizzled blond beard. He wears a brick-red and canary-yellow turban, a yellow and crimson-red striped doublet with puffy sleeves, and a red codpiece. His scarlet-red hose have decorative slashes down the thigh to show yellow fabric underneath. He holds one long sword in his left hand, to our right, so the blade rests on that shoulder, and another sword hangs in a scabbard on his waist. Facing him, to our right, is the second man. He has a dark beard and a broad red hat trimmed with white feathers. He wears a doublet with wide red and white horizontal stripes and a white codpiece. His close-fitting white hose have thin, dark lines running from his waist to his feet, like pinstripes. He rests the back of his left hand, closer to us, on his hip. The tip of a long sword rests between his feet, and his far hand holds the hilt, which is as tall as his shoulder. Both men wear slipper-like shoes. Beyond this pair, near the center of the composition, a dozen men work on the wooden ships in the waterway. The trees to our left have feathery canopies of dense green foliage highlighted with butter yellow. A red pennant flutters in the wind near the left edge of the painting. About two dozen men, women, and children sit and stand closely under the trees. They wear capes, robes, turbans, and headdresses in aquamarine blue, marigold orange, burgundy red, cream white, and laurel green. Several of them are turned toward a woman dressed in blue holding an infant. Along the far shoreline, to our right, a city with tan-colored, stone towers glows under a soft topaz-blue sky, mirrored in the luminous blue water, as a ship with a billowing white sail passes by. On the distant horizon, high mountain peaks are faintly visible through a steel-blue haze.
Dosso Dossi, The Trojans Repairing Their Ships in Sicily, c. 1520, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.250

The Trojans Repairing Their Ships in Sicily

Dosso Dossi · c. 1520 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1939.1.250

A long haired, bearded man holds a whip and stands in the middle of a crowd of about two dozen people who stand or twist, all in a building with columns and arches in this horizontal painting. Brushstrokes are visible in some areas, especially in the clothing and sky seen through one arch. All the men have light skin with a greenish cast while the women and children have smooth, pale skin. They wear dresses and robes in shades of rose pink, lapis blue, emerald green, or brown. The man at the center, Jesus, stands facing us with his right knee bent and his weight shifted onto his other leg. He holds a short, four-tailed whip in his right hand high and stretched across his body. He tilts his head to our left and looks down in that direction at the person next to him. Jesus has brown hair and wears a dark pink robe under a bright blue cloth that drapes over one shoulder and across the other hip. To our left, two men with bare torsos and raised arms lean away from Jesus. The man closest to him faces away from us as he bends over at the waist and looks over his shoulder at Jesus. That man wears a burnt orange cloth wrapped around his hips over a dark brown skirt, perhaps of a toga. Behind this pair are about a dozen other people and below them, two bare-breasted women recline on steps, their bodies angled to our right. One woman throws her head back against her raised arm, her mouth open and brow gathered. The other woman looks up at Jesus, holding one hand to her bare breast, her lips closed. She rests her right hand, to our left, on a cage holding five white birds on the ground next to her. Next to Jesus, on our right, a wrinkled, balding, gray-haired and bearded man sits on the steps so his knees come toward us. His torso twists to our left so he can rest his chin in his hand as he looks up at Jesus. That elbow and his other hand rest on the handle of a basket filled with gold coins. There are several animals around this man, including two black and white rabbits at his feet, nosing silver objects spilling from a pouch. Nearby, a gray bird sits on the step, and a white lamb with its feet tied to a stick lies belly up next to a wooden box. Behind the man is a crowd of at least eight people, looking at Jesus or each other. A bare-breasted woman guides a naked, toddler-aged child away from this group. A stick balanced across the woman’s far shoulder has a chicken hanging from the front end and a basket hanging behind. Another child lies back on the steps near the right edge of the painting. Next to that child, an open book and a loaf of bread lie beneath a table covered with an orange and brown patterned cloth. The scene takes place in a structure with columns and arched openings. Two people wearing blue robes hustle under one arched opening to our right, which leads back to a shadowed space lit with a chandelier. Blue sky and gray and white clouds are visible through the arch over Jesus, where there are also more sand-brown buildings in the distance. There are statues high up on ledges on either side of that opening. The artist signed the work in white paint in the lower left to the right of the bird cage in Greek letters.
El Greco, Christ Cleansing the Temple, probably before 1570, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1957.14.4

Christ Cleansing the Temple

El Greco · probably before 1570 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1957.14.4

A woman wearing a cobalt-blue robe and a white veil sits with her hands raised, palms out, as she looks toward a slender, bearded man who stands to our left in this vertical painting. Both have light skin and delicate features, and they sit in a room with stone walls and arched windows. There are faint circles under the woman’s light brown eyes. She has a long slender nose, and her pink lips are pursed. One knee is bent, and she is low to the ground, suggesting she sits on a stool. A book lies open on a wooden stand in front of her to our right, below her left elbow. The ruffled edges of her multi-layered, white veil sweep over her forehead and down to her shoulders. Her loose, long-sleeved blue garment is edged with gold and falls in angular folds to pool at her feet. She holds her long-fingered, slender hands up at her chest, palms facing the man to our left. He stands with his body angled toward her as he looks down, his head tipped slightly forward. His brown hair falls over his shoulders. His voluminous, gold-edged, red cloak is fastened at his throat with a gold, jeweled brooch, and it drapes over his shoulders and around his lower torso, leaving his arms, chest, and a gash over his right ribs exposed. He holds a tall, gold staff topped with a jeweled cross in his left hand, to our right. A moss-green pennant flutters back from the base of the cross, as if lifted in a breeze. The man holds up his other hand so the palm faces the woman with the first two fingers raised. Round, puncture wounds with red blood mark the palm of that hand and tops of both bare feet. The floor is patterned with gray, brown, blue, and green tiles. The wall behind the woman has honey-brown paneling along the bottom half and the top half is slate gray. Gray columns are spaced along that wall, supporting a curving, vaulted ceiling. Two arched windows pierce the wall behind the woman, and both have stained glass designs within the curving tops. The window closer to us opens onto a narrow view of a landscape with a rose-pink arch over a bridge, and a path winding through green fields. An open door over the shoulder of the man, to our left, shows the stepped roofline of a pink building under a blue sky. The entire scene is framed with a flattened arch supported by gleaming columns of polished, veined brown stone, creating the impression that we look onto the people and room through the arch. The columns have leafy capitals and white bases. The tan-colored arch is carved with a row of stylized rosettes along the opening that spans the top of the painting.
Anonymous Artist, Christ Appearing to the Virgin, c. 1475, oil on panel, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.45

Christ Appearing to the Virgin

Anonymous Artist · c. 1475 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1937.1.45

Bibliography

1865

  • Catalogo de la galeria de Cuadros de la posesion de Vista-Alegre, de propriedad del Ezcmo. Sr. Marques de Salamanca. Madrid, 1865.