Flâneur

The Actor Iwai Hanshiro IV as Tonase (?) in the Play Kanadehon Chushingura (?), Performed at the Kiri Theater (?) in the Eighth Month, 1787 (?)

Katsukawa Shun'ei, c. 1787

Color woodblock print; hosoban

Armida Encounters the Sleeping Rinaldo

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Italian, 1696–1770), c. 1742–45

Oil on canvas

This painting likely once graced a large hall at the Palazzo Corner in Venice along with several others. The suite illustrates the ill-fated love of Armida and Rinaldo from Torquato Tasso’s 1581 epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered). The story takes place during the First Crusade, an eleventh-century military expedition in which Christian knights attempted to seize control of...

The Creation of Adam

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, c. 1645/50

Monotype in black ink on ivory laid paper

Considered one of the most original and innovative Italian artists of the Baroque period, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione literally separated light from darkness, creating form out of chaos in this work, his earliest known monotype. In a perfect match of medium and message, Castiglione, the Genoese artist credited with inventing the technique, used this new method to portray the central act of...