Close Look

Technical examination uncovers the creative process of a work attributed to the Indian painter Nainsukh.

Over the course of a single summer, Henri Matisse and André Derain collaborated with Amélie Matisse to create new forms of sensory expression.

Louis Lang’s Art Students presents an intriguing window into the professionalization of women’s art education in the United States during the nineteenth century.

Unpack the peculiar ways the jester challenged the medieval social order

How the artist’s unorthodox techniques fool and delight the eye

Maya artists mined a rich body of mythological lore to visualize their gods in imaginative ways.

Technical examination of Jacques Louis David’s masterpiece reveals that the refinements seen in the artist’s preparatory drawings didn’t end when he began painting—rather, they continued through all stages of its execution.

In Jacques Louis David’s The Death of Socrates (1787), a parable of principle on the eve of the French Revolution.

Three painters radically reenvision the role of women artists around the time of the French Revolution.

How painters in Edo-period Japan reinvigorated artistic traditions and idealized the past.