In this rich seascape, Winslow Homer incorporates not only aquamarine blue, but also dark yellows, purples, mauves, lavenders, oranges, and golds. "Th...

To create this image, Adam Fuss bought rabbits from a farmer, and then carefully removed their guts. "When you are truly in love and then you lose it,...

The Boxer at Rest, on loan from the National Museum of Rome, will be unveiled in the United States for the first time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York this June 1 as part of the Year of Italian Culture in the United States.

In this work, David depicts Brutus--the Roman who famously ordered the execution of his sons when they were found guilty of treason--along with his wi...

In traditional Japanese art, deer symbolize messengers of the gods, and the cry of the deer is associated with longing for one's lover. In this work, ...

Likely used for serving broth to a woman at her dressing table, this bowl is elaborately decorated with vignettes of fish intended to allude to its co...

Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity at the Metropolitan Museum of Art displays how master painters (mavericks in their day) created magical gardens -- and gowns -- using relationships between light and dark color.

Depicted in a posture associated with meditation, this figure's hair is partially shaved off, he has long earlobes, and he holds a rolled scroll in on...

Touching the edge of the perfectly balanced basket on her head, an alluring woman in the prime of her youth is depicted bringing offerings to the dece...

Last week's Art Talk got particularly passionate responses from KCRW listeners who hear my program on the air, or those who read the text of it on the...

The portrait of Juan de Pareja by Velázquez that hangs in a gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan is surrounded by other estimable works, even a few of genius. But this work compels the viewer to look.

Featuring a miniature interpretation of an architectural ornament from ancient Rome, this Chinese porcelain ewer was destined to become a courtly obje...

This slit gong depicts the face and voice of one of the founding ancestors of the village where it was made. "The ancestors watch over human activitie...

Jacopo Bassano was eighty years old when he started this paining, and he died before it was completed. "I think his age liberated him and that he was ...

In this drawing, based on Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" fresco, Rembrandt first drew Christ as a much younger man. Later, he changed his mind, and...

Cylinder seals were carved in reverse to create a raised impression; their whole imagery was only revealed when rolled out onto a clay surface. The sc...

The two scenes on this ivory plaque are set in the days after Christ's Resurrection from the tomb during the period before the Ascension. "The power t...

Curator Alison Manges Nogueira admits that she has a clearer understanding of Bellini's Madonna and Child since becoming a mother herself. "I can see ...

On Monday Christopher Noey, General Manager of Media Production, Senior producer, discussed 82nd & Fifth during a Google Art Project Art Talk Hangout....

Curator Dirk Breiding came across a surprising Hebrew inscription on this fifteenth-century German crossbow. Intrigued by its translation, he began to...

Roger Fenton has pushed the horizon line down to the bottom of this photograph, thus creating a "dreamlike sea of sky with waves of clouds going into ...

When this coronation image of Tutankhamun was made, the newly minted ruler was only six years old. "We see only the face of a sweet, innocent, young b...

Presented to Edward Dean Adams--who in the 1890s rescued the American cotton oil industry--this vase was meant to look like a cotton plant, complete w...