Curated galleries for every mood

Themes that run through Renaissance, Baroque, and American art

Western painting between 1500 and 1920 keeps returning to the same handful of questions. Love and romance turns into a language of mirrors, flowers, and stolen glances. Religion and mythology stage cosmic drama on a human scale — annunciations, martyrdoms, gods slipping into the world. Power and politics harden into portraits of kings and cardinals who want their legitimacy painted into place. Tragedy and death press against still lifes and crucifixions alike. Daily life records kitchens, taverns, and merchant houses no one expected to survive. The portrait becomes the era’s technology for staying alive after death. And landscape, taken up later by the Hudson River School and American Impressionists, turns rivers, mountains, and coastlines into a distinctly American subject.

Our collections group paintings across centuries and countries by the problem they are trying to solve, not just the studio that made them. Reading a Caravaggio next to a Rembrandt next to a Vermeer reveals how differently three brilliant minds answered the same question about light, faith, or grief.