In the second half of the 16th century, the countryside around Venice witnessed the arrival of a totally new type of housing, a cross between farmhouse and palazzo, called the villa. When creating villas, Andrea Palladio brought together grand architecture with habitation and daily usage in trying to marry beauty with utility. Around 1560 in Maser, the Barbaro brothers asked Andrea Palladio to build a country house and the painter Paolo Veronese to...

Ten years have passed since the Greek forces disembarked on the shores of Troy. But King Priam's city has still not fallen. Inside its walls, the king's eldest son, Hector, reproaches his brother Paris for causing this war with no end.

"In 1861, Charles Garnier's project was selected for its "rare and superior qualities in the beautiful distribution of the plans, the monumental and characteristic aspect of the facades and sections." The Palais Garnier is a building of exceptional opulence. The style is monumental and considered typically Beaux-Arts, with its use of axial symmetry, exterior ornamentation, polychrome columns, marble friezes, and lavish statuary. During the Second...

A staggering number of paintings were once thought to be Rembrandts, but of the 800 or so works attributed to the Dutch master during the 19th century, only about 300 remain authenticated. Interestingly, the 1800s were also a period in which France dominated Rembrandt collecting and research. In the 20th century, expertise shifted to Holland, Great Britain, and the U.S., leaving French holdings isolated and neglected for a time. The Louvre, however,...

Look beneath the surface of any centuries-old painting and you'll find no shortage of stories. More than likely the picture, like an ancient building, has a colorful history of damage and restoration. But some masterpieces tell a separate tale that can't be seen with the eye or a microscope. Poussin Study Day at the Museé des Beaux-Arts in Lyon focused on a single work, The Flight into Egypt, which was acquired in association with the Louvre and...

Vermeer, born in 1632, lived in Delft all of his life and was influenced by Rembrandt. His work consisted of a series of variations on enigmatic interiors. Only 34 of his paintings are known to exist. In this program, video graphics are used to focus on the key elements of The Astronomer for the purpose of analyzing its structure and composition.

Leonardo da Vinci began his career around 1472 in Florence as a portrait painter. This program examines ten elements in da Vinci's The Virgin, the Infant Jesus, and Saint Anne: darkness and light, volume and color, figure and setting, distance, proximity, movement, and rest. In this painting, Saint Anne wears her hair braided. Her eyes are lowered and she is smiling. On her knees, the Virgin Mary is shown in a low-neck dress, leaning toward the infant...

Comprehensive collection catalog of the paintings collection of the Louvre. Each entry includes artist's name, painting name, date, size, material, location in the museum, and the Louvre inventory number. The DVD-ROM includes all paintings in the book and is browsable by artist, collection, or location. The advanced search feature allows searching by title, date, material, location, and more.

Limoges enamels, the richest surviving corpus of medieval metalwork, were renowned throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. Yet today they are little known outside academic circles. The present volume, published in conjuction with the exhibition Enamels of Limoges, 1100-1350, brings to deserved public attention nearly two hundred of the most important and representative examples from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musee du Louvre,...