Objects, images, descriptions and audio guide.
On the eighth night, the parrot tells Khujasta a story—the most lavishly illustrated of all the chapters in the book—that has important parallels with the experiences of…
A poor dervish, wearing a fur cap and short brown lower garment, stands captive before the furious king of Bahilistan. Before he can kill the dervish, a vizier reminds h…
The king of Kamarupa, which ironically means “body of erotic love,” had leprosy. The hunter brought the captured mother parrot to the king, assuring him that the bird kn…
A golden window shade has been rolled up to reveal a princess seated on a terrace. The carpet draped over the sill echoes that of the balcony rail where royals would sho…
Neri de Bicci was a prolific painter of mainly religious themes, active principally in Florence as a panel painter. His grandfather Lorenzo di Bicci was also a painter i…
The fourth Mughal emperor of India, Jahangir, had tiny portraits of himself made to give as gifts to his friends, family, and nobles of the court as a sign of royal favo…
Gleaning—or picking up what little grain remains after a wheat field has been harvested—was usually the job of the poor, especially women and children. Breton shows a si…
Here the natural appearance of a gnarled and vine-entangled pine has been transformed into a rhythmic abstraction of brushstrokes and ink tonalities, with unifying oppos…
Ribot participated in a loosely defined artistic movement known as Realism, which sought to depict the gritty lives of workers and peasants. Often dark in tone and sombe…
Yi Ha-eung (1820−1898), the artist of this eight-panel folding screen, was one of the most influential men in late 19th-century Korea. Acting as the regent for his son, …
The principal—and largest—figure in this leaf depicts Erlang, a celestial commander in a popular myth. Here he wears full armor and holds his sword. Seated by a pine tre…
This landscape illustrates the traditionalism of Chinese painting: while the brush manner is novel, the composition is based on early Song dynasty (960-1127) models. The…
Throughout the 1800s and into the 1900s, prints, paintings, and photographs, like Louis Haghe’s Egypt and Nubia series, brought back by artists who voyaged to Egypt, ins…
A Mughal prince encounters a lion in the wilderness and, maintaining his composure, dispatches it with a single blow of his sword. Equally fearless, his horse lunges tow…
Like his father Krishna, Pradyumna appears blue in color. He is shown three times in this painting with his bride. The scene of his marriage is in the upper level where …
Winged Fortune is a study for a figure in The Discoverer, a mural that William Morris Hunt painted for the Assembly Chamber in New York's State Capitol in Albany. The mu…
Charles W. Hawthorne painted T he Offering in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he had established the summertime Cape Cod School of Art. In this composition, two boys …
In a story of virtuous leadership and wise government, the Roman commander Scipio Africanus the Elder appears after his stunning conquest of New Carthage in Spain in 209…
This panel originally formed the right half of a diptych, a hinged two-paneled painting used for private worship. The missing left panel probably depicted the Virgin and…
The inner side of the top cover is fully painted with images of the Five Cosmic Buddhas of Esoteric Buddhism. Each one has a different color, meaningful hand gesture, an…
Pieces of paper, sandalwood paste, vermilion powder, and spices like turmeric and saffron were ritually added to the top cover of this manuscript during its veneration i…
Rousseau was profoundly influenced by the atmospheric still lifes of Jean Siméon Chardin (1699-1779), whom the artist and other French painters like François Bonvin (181…
A young man with a slight mustache and warm brown eyes looks at the viewer from this painting. The linen on which his image was rendered was a less popular alternative t…
A unique landscape painting in the existing body of Chen Hongshou’s art, this painting reveals his involvement with the practice of fang (imitation) to achieve creative …