Title: Battle of Tours

Author: Charles de Steuben

Year: 1837

Medium: oil on canvas

Museum: Chateau de Versailles – France

The Battle of Tours was fought on October 10, 732 between forces under the Frankish leader Charles Martel and a massive invading Islamic army led by Emir Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi Abd al Rahman, near the city of Tours, France. During the battle, the Franks defeated the Islamic army and Emir Abd er Rahman was killed. This battle stopped the northward advance of Islam from the Iberian peninsula, and is considered by most historians to be of macrohistorical importance, in that it halted the Islamic conquests, and preserved Christianity as the controlling faith in Europe, during a period in which Islam was overrunning the remains of the old Roman and Persian Empires.

Title: God Speed

Author: Edmund Leighton

Year: 1900

Genre: History painting

Medium: oil on canvas

Edmund Leighton made several paintings on the subject of chivalry. God Speed was one of the earliest paintings on the series and up to this day is considered as one of Leighton’s most recognizable works. It captures love during the Medieval period, depicting a knight off to battle, leaving his beloved woman behind. The woman wishes him luck by tying a sash around his arm, a custom during those times, as a sign that they will remain united and will be reunited, a symbol of hope that all will turn out well. 

Title: The Romans in their Decadence

Author: Thomas Couture

Year: 1847

Medium: oil paint

Location: Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Title: The wanderer above the sea of fog

Artist: Caspar David Friedrich

Year: 1817

Medium: oil on canvas

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer), also known as Wanderer above the Mist or Mountaineer in a Misty Landscape, is an oil painting c. 1818 by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. It has been considered one of the masterpieces of Romanticism and one of its most representative works. It currently resides in the Kunsthalle Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany.

In the foreground, a young man stands upon a rocky precipice with his back to the viewer. He is wrapped in a dark green overcoat, and grips a walking stick in his right hand. His hair caught in a wind, the wanderer gazes out on a landscape covered in a thick sea of fog. In the middle ground, several other ridges, perhaps not unlike the ones the wanderer himself stands upon, jut out from the mass. Through the wreaths of fog, forests of trees can be perceived atop these escarpments. In the far distance, faded mountains rise in the left, gently leveling off into lowland plains in the east. Beyond here, the pervading fog stretches out indefinitely, eventually commingling with the horizon and becoming indistinguishable from the cloud-filled sky.

Friedrich’s canvases are intended to promote a meditative state, arising out of the vision and spirit of the artist and communicated to the viewer as an object for contemplation. “The artist,” he wrote, “should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him.” Thus he gave these directions to would-be artists, “Close your bodily eye so that you see your picture first with your spiritual eye. Then bring what you saw in the dark into the light, so that it may have an effect on others, shining inwards from outside.

Title: Girl with a Pearl Earring

Artist: Johannes Vermeer Genre tronie

Date: circa 1665

Medium: oil on canvas

Artist: Leonardo da Vinci

Year: c. 1490

Type: Pen and ink with wash over metalpoint on paper

Location: Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice

The Vitruvian Man, Italian: Le proporzioni del corpo umano secondo Vitruvio, is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci around 1490. It is accompanied by notes based on the work of the architect Vitruvius. The drawing, which is in pen and ink on paper, depicts a man in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and inscribed in a circle and square. The drawing and text are sometimes called the Canon of Proportions or, less often, Proportions of Man. It is kept in the Gabinetto dei disegni e stampe of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, in Venice, Italy, under reference 228. Like most works on paper, it is displayed to the public only occasionally. The drawing is based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise De Architectura. Vitruvius described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion among the Classical orders of architecture. Vitruvius determined that the ideal body should be eight heads high. Leonardo’s drawing is traditionally named in honor of the architect.

Title: Hylas and the Nymphs

Artist: John William Waterhouse

Year: 1896

Type: Oil on canvas

Hylas and the Nymph is an oil on canvas painting undertaken by Baron François Gérard in about 1826 showing a story from Greek mythology. 

The painting Hylas and the Nymph depicts the moment when the Greek hero Hylas is abducted by a Naiad Nymph.

Hylas was an Argonaut, who had joined the crew of the Argo alongside his friend Heracles. When the Argo stopped for water in Mysia, the Naiad fell in love with the beautiful Hylas. Heracles would be abandoned by Jason when he stopped to look for his companion, but Hylas was never found by Heracles. 

title : Laomendon Punished by Neptune and Apollo

author : Pierre Dulin

year : 1707

type : oil,canvas