Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is owned by Groupe Artémis, the holding company of François-Henri Pinault. Sales in 2015 totalled £4.8 billion. In 2017, the Salvator Mundi was sold for $400 million at Christie's in New York, at the time the highest price ever paid for a single painting at an auction.
The Scream is a composition created by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in 1893. The Norwegian name of the piece is Skrik (Shriek), and the German title under which it was first exhibited is Der Schrei der Natur. The agonized face in the painting has become one of the most iconic images of art, seen as symbolizing the anxiety of the human condition. Munch's work, including The Scream, would go on to have a formative influence on the Expressionist movement.
David Teniers the Younger or David Teniers II was a Flemish Baroque painter, printmaker, draughtsman, miniaturist painter, staffage painter, copyist and art curator. He was an extremely versatile artist known for his prolific output. He was an innovator in a wide range of genres such as history painting, genre painting, landscape painting, portrait and still life. He is now best remembered as the leading Flemish genre painter of his day. Teniers is particularly known for developing the peasant genre, the tavern scene, pictures of collections and scenes with alchemists and physicians.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a museum of American art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum, founded by Alice Walton and designed by Moshe Safdie, officially opened on 11 November 2011. It offers free public admission.
The Massacre of the Innocents is the subject of two paintings by Peter Paul Rubens depicting the episode of the biblical Massacre of the Innocents of Bethlehem, as related in the Gospel of Matthew (2:13-18). The first, measuring 142 x 182 cm, was painted after his return to his native Antwerp in 1608, following eight years spent in Italy.
The Holy Infants Embracing is a lost painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. It represents the infant Christ embracing his cousin John the Baptist. The subject matter relates to the two paintings of the Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo and numerous other Renaissance works by Raphael and others of the meeting of the two children on the road to Egypt while escaping the Massacre of the Innocents.
Water Lilies is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840–1926). The paintings depict his flower garden at his home in Giverny, and were the main focus of his artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. Many of the works were painted while Monet suffered from cataracts.
Artus Wolffort, Artus Wolffaert or Artus Wolffaerts (1581–1641) was a Flemish painter known mainly for his history paintings depicting religious and mythological scenes.
Jan Cossiers was a Flemish painter and draughtsman. Cossiers' earliest works were Caravaggesque genre works depicting low life scenes. Later in his career he painted mostly history and religious subjects as well as portraits. Cossiers was one of the leading painters in Antwerp after Rubens' death in 1640 and one of the most original colorists in 17th-century Flanders.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens's highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens was a painter producing altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. He was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp.
The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria, also known simply as Holy Conversation, is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Titian. It is one of his several versions of the canonical image of the Madonna and Child.
Salvator Mundi is a painting attributed in whole or in part to the Italian High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1499–1510. Long thought to be a copy of a lost original veiled with overpainting, it was rediscovered, restored, and included in a major exhibition of Leonardo's work at the National Gallery, London, in 2011–2012. Christie's claimed just after selling the work that most leading scholars consider it to be an original work by Leonardo, but this attribution has been disputed by other leading specialists, some of whom propose that he only contributed certain elements; and others who believe that the extensive damage prevents a definitive attribution.
Louis Finson, Lodewijk Finson or Ludovicus Finsonius was a Flemish painter, draughtsman, copyist and art dealer. He painted portraits, religious compositions, allegorical paintings and genre scenes. Moving to Italy early in his career, he became one of the first Flemish followers of Caravaggio whom he knew personally in Naples. He produced a number of copies after works by Caravaggio. He worked for a number of years in various cities in France where he created altarpieces and portraits. He is known for being the co-owner together with his fellow Flemish painter and business partner Abraham Vinck of two paintings by Caravaggio. Louis Finson played a major role in the Northern Caravaggesque movement through his own works as well as his role as an art dealer.
The Feast of Herod refers to the episode in the Gospels following the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, when Salome presents his head to her parents. The account in the Book of Mark describes Herod holding a banquet on his birthday for his high officials and military commanders, and leading men of Galilee. At this banquet, Herod's daughter dances before Herod, who is pleased and offers her anything she asks for in return. The girl asks her mother what she should request, and she is told to demand the head of John the Baptist. Reluctantly, Herod orders the beheading of John, and John's head is delivered to her, at her request, "on a platter."(Mark 6:17–29)
Portrait of a Commander or A Commander Being Dressed for Battle is a portrait of an unknown man in plate armour, by Peter Paul Rubens. In July 2010 it was sold for £9 million by Christie's after Sotheby's turned it down, suspecting its authenticity as a Rubens. In December 2011, the portrait was placed on loan with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
David Bowie owned an extensive private art collection which included paintings, sculpture and furniture. He started collecting art in the mid-1970s and continued through the end of his life. His collection included paintings that he himself painted.
Le Palais Ducal or The Doge's Palace is the name given to various oil paintings which depict the Doge's Palace made by Claude Monet during a visit to Venice in 1908.
The Man of Sorrows is a tempera and oil on panel painting of Jesus Christ by the Florentine artist Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), thought to have been painted sometime between 1500 and 1510.
Salome, also called Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, is an oil painting by Titian, made in around 1570, and currently in a private collection. It is not to be confused with other compositions of Salome and Judith by Titian.
