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! Salome’s dancing so pleased her stepfather Herod that he offered her anything she wanted. Her mother advised Salome to demand John the Baptist’s head, which Salome presented to her family in an elaborate dish....
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Laib was a German painter who spent most of his career in Austria. Proof that he came to Salzburg at an early age is suggested by the stylistic affinity of many of his works with Salzburg...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Descent from the Cross, or Deposition of Christ, is the scene, as depicted in art, from the Gospels' accounts of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus taking Christ down from the cross after his crucifixion...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This scene and that of King Solomon Receiving the Queen of Sheba are particularly fine examples of the decorative style practiced in Antwerp by a group of largely anonymous artists now dubbed Antwerp Mannerists. The paintings...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This painting illustrates a scene from the Old Testament. After the prophet Samuel anointed David as King Saul's successor, Saul became jealous and plotted David's death. Here the artist shows David'...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Wading carefully through the water of the River Jordan, Christ leans his upper body forward, and extends his arms for balance, his fingertips gently touching Saint John the Baptist's side. Christ’s outstretched arms...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The words Ave gratia plena Dominus tecum (Greetings most favored one! The Lord is with you) from Saint Luke’s Gospel (1:8) emerge from the archangel Gabriel’s mouth as he announces the conception of...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! At the left, Saint Peter and other disciples of Christ pull their teeming nets of fish aboard a boat. After an unsuccessful night of fishing on the Sea of Tiberius, the tired and hungry disciples had...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
