Free downloadable public domain Catholic paintings on the topic of the Bible.
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! For the medieval viewer, this Crucifixion instantly recalled wrenching extra-biblical details, like the fact that Christ could not rest his head to the side lest his shoulders be pierced with thorns. The German tract Christi Leiden...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This is a stained glass window—designed in North Netherlands—portrays the story told in I Kings 17: 8-24, in the city of Zarephath the prophet Elijah met a widow gathering sticks who gave him food...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This diptych, or two-panel painting, is hinged at the center so that it could be opened and closed and easily transported. It was clearly designed as an object for private devotion. The owner would have been...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book, included in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible, but excluded from the Hebrew canon and assigned by Protestants to the...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The burial of Jesus refers to the burial of the body of Jesus after crucifixion, before the eve of the sabbath described in the New Testament. According to the canonical gospel accounts, he was placed in...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In retaliation for Samson’s single-handed decimation of their army, the Philistines bribed his lover Delilah to discover the source of his strength: his hair, uncut since birth. Samson’s hair was shorn as he lay...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Joseph tells his dreams to his parents and his brothers. Standing by a bed of his mother Rachel, Joseph tells his dreams to his father Jacob who is sitting in front of the bed, left some...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! A muscular young man with a strong profile, who looks fully destined to kill a giant and to reign as Israel's king, this David is no innocent boy with a slingshot. Carelessly cradling Goliath&...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Old Testament hero Samson rests his head on his hand in a pensive, even melancholic pose. Objects on the table recall two of his heroic deeds: he killed a lion with his bare hands, and...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This small but opulent panel painting was once joined to another panel with hinges to form a diptych. Given its small size, its original function was for private devotional use. It could be folded like a...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Biblical parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19-21) tells of a man who feasted and celebrated every day, while a beggar named Lazarus sat starving nearby. Dogs came to lick the sores...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Despite the religious subject, the scale and intricate detail indicate that this painting was not for a church setting. Instead, as an independent work of art, a collector would have admired its artistry and unusual combination...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Jean de Beaumetz became the official court painter to the Burgundian duke, Philip the Bold, in 1376. Between 1389 and 1395 he created devotional paintings for the monks’ cells at the Chartreuse de Champmol, the monastery...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The artist has set Christ's birth in a ruined stable, witnessed by shepherds and angels. The candle Joseph holds symbolizes the supremacy of Christ's divine radiance over earthly light. Beyond the overgrown...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The women's upturned, grasping palms beautifully convey their adoration of Christ, tenderly answered by Christ's gesture. Bartolomeo Rigossi used a brilliant yellow to describe the wispy grass and foliage as well as...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This initial B, introducing the first psalm, Beatus vir, represents King David who is shown here playing a psaltery, a stringed instrument consisting of a shallow box that is plucked, instead of his more traditional harp....
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The symbolic family tree of Jesus is depicted here. The tree grows from the body of the sleeping Jesse. He was the ancestor of a family of kings that, according to tradition, included Solomon, David, and...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The crestfallen Prophet Jeremiah rests his weary, old head on his hand. He laments Jerusalem going up in flames – in the background – whose destruction he had prophesied. Rembrandt heightened the sense of drama with powerful contrasts...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Rubens painted this image of Judah Maccabee praying for the dead; the painting illustrates an episode from 2 Maccabees 12:39–48 in which Judah's troops find stolen idolatrous charms on the corpses of...
The woman with seven sons was a Jewish martyr described in 2 Maccabees 7 and other sources, who had seven sons that were arrested (along with her) by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who forced them to prove their respect to him by consuming pig meat. When they refused, he tortured and...
This is a painting from the Deuterocanonical book Maccabees. It shows the moment when Antiochus IV (the king of the Seleucid Empire) began to force Jews to worship Greek Gods by royal decree (1 Maccabees Verses 44–50). The Maccabees were a group of Jewish rebel warriors who took control...
King David exemplified mercy and self-restraint in preventing his companion Abishai from killing the sleeping King Saul (1 Samuel 26: 5-10). The simple, dramatic composition and statuesque main figures give this small, slightly eerie, moonlit scene a monumental quality. Yet the rhythm from the flowing movement and patterns of the...
Peter Paul Rubens depicted the moment after the Crucifixion and before the Resurrection when Christ is placed into the tomb. He is being supported by those closest to him in life: John the Evangelist, in a brilliant red robe, bears the weight of Christ; Mary Magdalene cries in the background;...
Two of Christ's followers, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, carry his body from the cross to the tomb. Mary, his mother, kneels and pulls her son's face close to hers for one last moment, while Mary Magdalene kneels tearfully at his feet in splendid brocaded robes....
