Paintings

Unidentified Japanese painters. The many-headed monster belongs to a story of injustice at the imperial court.

Unidentified Chinese painters. In 755, An Lushan’s rebellion shattered the Tang court’s established order. The following year, in 756, Emperor Xuanzong fled the capital for Sichuan.

Unidentified Malwa painter. Krishna stands among cowherd women in a flowering grove. This miniature, made in Malwa around 1630–40, illustrates Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda.

Francisco Goya. Goya painted this scene on a wall of his house near Madrid, purchased in 1819.

Vittore Carpaccio. The dead Christ sits on a broken throne between two people who could never have met during his lifetime.

John Everett Millais. Ophelia is dying in the water, still supported by her spread-out dress. Millais chose an episode from Hamlet recounted by Queen Gertrude.

Petrus Christus. For a time, this man was considered a saint because of a halo the painter never made. The later addition was removed before a 1994 exhibition.

Berthe Morisot. A woman sits before a mirror, still wearing earrings and a black neck ribbon. Berthe Morisot shows a private act of self-care connected to appearing in society.

Horace Pippin. A small house stands before a white cotton field. An older woman and a child share its yard with domestic animals.

Sesson Shukei. The gibbons on Sesson’s screen belong to both a landscape and a Buddhist parable. A chain of animals reaches toward the moon’s reflection in water.

Li Gonglin. Elders receive food and entertainment. This fragment of Li Gonglin’s scroll, made around 1085, illustrates the Classic of Filial Piety.

Attributed to Miskin. A ruler has accidentally killed a shepherd while hunting and must answer to the boy’s mother. He offers her a choice: cut off his head or accept gold.

Annibale Carracci. Annibale Carracci painted the Coronation of the Virgin shortly after arriving in Rome in 1595, for Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini.

Gerard David. Mary nurses her child in a northern woodland landscape. The Holy Family is fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod’s threat.

Berthe Morisot. A woman in blue sits in a garden while a child nearly disappears among flowers behind her.

Albert Bierstadt. Bierstadt painted this enormous landscape in New York in 1863, using material gathered on a western journey.

Sakai Hōitsu. A single persimmon tree remains on this two-panel screen. Sakai Hoitsu painted it in late autumn 1816, with fruit still on the branches and leaves already curling.

Ma Yuan. A scholar pauses beside a waterfall in a garden landscape. Ma Yuan painted this small work in the early thirteenth century within the orbit of the Southern Song imperial academy.

Attributed to Miskin. Dilaram plays before King Bahram Gur while animals gather around. In Amir Khusrau’s story, her music can put animals to sleep and wake them.

Giotto di Bondone. One of the Magi has lifted the infant Christ while Mary reclines beside him under a shelter. Giotto makes adoration into close bodily contact.

Anthony van Dyck. Lucas van Uffel was a wealthy Flemish merchant living in Venice. Van Dyck painted him around 1622 while studying Italian art.

Paul Cezanne. Marseille’s bay opens beyond the roofs of L’Estaque. Cezanne repeatedly returned to this view during the 1880s.

George Caleb Bingham. A father and son descend the Missouri with a cargo of furs.

Itō Jakuchū. Jakuchū devoted a large hanging scroll to this plum tree in 1755, at a turning point in his life.

Xia Gui. A small market lies at the foot of a mountain. Xia Gui painted it in ink on silk in the early thirteenth century, on a leaf about twenty-five centimeters high.

Basawan. Two pilgrims meet on a road, bound for different holy places. A Muslim is traveling to Mecca, while a Brahman advances toward a Hindu temple by repeatedly prostrating himself full…

Guercino. Samson still resists, but several men already restrain his body. Guercino painted this moment in 1619 for Cardinal Giacomo Serra, the papal legate in Ferrara.

Jan van Eyck. In two narrow panels, Jan van Eyck juxtaposed Christ’s death with the future judgment of humanity. The work dates to approximately 1436–38.

Paul Cezanne. Hortense Fiquet posed for Cezanne for more than twenty years and became his most frequently painted model. This portrait belongs to four works with related clothing and pose.

William Merritt Chase. William Merritt Chase painted this shore around 1892, shortly after his summer art school opened at Shinnecock Hills on Long Island. He directed it from 1891 to 1902.

Katsushika Hokusai. Two cocks have brought their heads close together, leaving little space between them.

Zhao Mengjian. Zhao Mengjian drew these dense clusters of narcissus in the mid-thirteenth century.

Chitarman. Shah Jahan stands on a terrace holding a small pendant containing his own portrait. Chitarman painted him in 1627–28, at the beginning of the new reign.

Fra Filippo Lippi. A woman occupies most of the room, while a man appears only in a side window. Filippo Lippi painted this unusual pair around 1440.

Vincent van Gogh. These irises were originally violet against a pink background. Van Gogh painted them in May 1890, before leaving the asylum at Saint-Rémy.

Paul Cezanne. Nude figures gather beside water beneath trees. In this late work, Cezanne returns to bathers, a subject that occupied him for decades.