Free downloadable public domain Catholic paintings on the topic of the Bible.
Details: Maffei, who lived and worked in the cities of Vicenza and Padua, was profoundly influenced by the art of Bassano, Tintoretto, and Veronese, his Venetian predecessors. His style is characteristic for its elegance, far removed from realism. This scene from the biblical book of Genesis shows the angel appearing...
Details: Pentecost is a Christian holiday that takes place on the 50th day after Easter Sunday. It commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Feast of Weeks, as described in the Acts of the...
Details: Luke 2:41-52 describes the Finding in the Temple. At the age of twelve, Jesus joins Mary and Joseph, as well as a large number of their relatives and friends, on a journey to Jerusalem "according to custom" - that is, Passover. On the day of their...
Details: Guillaume Vrelant, born in Utrecht, was known to be in Bruges from 1454 onward where he died around 1481. He probably went there to sidestep a 1427 law which banned the sale of Utrecht images. A painter very much in vogue, he founded the Illuminators’ Guild in Bruges under...
Details: In Genesis 40, the Pharoah threw his butler and baker into prison for upsetting him. They both had dreams the first night they were in prison and Joseph interpreted them. The butler dream was as follows: "I saw a vine in front of me, and on the vine...
Details: The miracle of curing the man born blind is one of the Gospel miracles in which Jesus is said to have restored the sight of a man at Siloam. Although not identified in the gospel, the man who was healed has been given the name Celidonius by church tradition....
Details: Following his baptism by John the Baptist, Christ retired to the wilderness for forty days, where he was "tested by Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him" (Mark 1:13). This picture is a fragment of a larger canvas in which...
Details: John Martin was a Romantic painter, engraver, and illustrator from England. He was known for his typically large and melodramatic paintings of religious subjects and fantastic compositions, which were populated with minute figures set in imposing landscapes. Martin's paintings and prints were popular with the general public—...
Details: The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus in the canonical gospels (and, to a lesser extent, other New Testament books) are said to have occurred after Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, but before his ascension. The Gospel of John was written around the year 80 or 90 CE. Jesus appears...
Details: The Presentation of Jesus at the Temple is an early incident in Jesus Christ's life that describes his presentation at the Temple in Jerusalem and is commemorated by various churches on Candlemas, or the "Feast of the Presentation of Jesus," 40 days after Christmas. The...
Details: Duccio di Buoninsegna was a Tuscan painter who worked in Siena in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Throughout his career, he was contracted to perform several major works in government and religious buildings throughout Italy. Duccio is regarded as one of the finest Italian painters of the...
Details: The artist captures the display of splendour at court while combining realism in the detailing with religious symbols and typological references. The solemn earnestness of his figures and the carefully depiction of the human face are characteristic of his work. While the Annunciation scene provides a view of a...
Details: The Christian tradition holds that the women who came to Jesus' tomb on the third day after his crucifixion discovered it empty. The story is told in all four canonical gospels, but they differ little beyond a basic outline. However, oral traditions predate the gospels and Paul'...
Details: The early days of the church were a time of phenomenal growth and apostolic miracles. In Acts 5:15-16 we read, “People brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as...
Details: The liberation of the apostle Peter is an event described in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 12 in which the apostle Peter is rescued from prison by an angel. Although described in a short textual passage, the tale has given rise to theological discussions and has been the...
Details: This panel which is part of a larger ensemble was commissioned for the private chapel in the castle of Ebreichsdorf, south of Vienna. Originally, there were eighteen scenes, some extending across two lights of the windows. Except for one panel in Vienna, The Cloisters panels are all that survive....
Details: Belshazzar's Feast is a major painting by Rembrandt now in the National Gallery, London. The painting is Rembrandt's attempt to establish himself as a painter of large, baroque history paintings. The date of the painting is unknown, but most sources give a date between 1635...
Details: The Master of Noah’s Ark was named after an illuminated initial containing that subject now in the Vatican Library. Though he may have worked in Florence, he was unlikely to have been Florentine himself. This rare miniature depicts the story from the apocrypha of Tobias, son of Tobit,...
Details: Ugolino da Siena was the most original and accomplished follower of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the greatest Sienese painter of the fourteenth century. Among Ugolino's most important commissions was the multi-panel altarpiece for the high altar of Santa Croce, the Franciscan church in Florence. This painting of the...
Details: One of the most celebrated paintings in the Robert Lehman Collection, this depiction of the Annunciation unfolds in a classicizing architectural interior rendered with one-point perspective to create the illusion of depth, a technique achieved in early fifteenth-century Florence. The incised lines visible on the panel's surface...
Details: In a domestic interior, the Virgin Mary kneels before a prie-dieu on which her prayer book rests. The archangel Gabriel, at the left, greets her with the Gospel announcement of the forthcoming birth of Jesus: "Ave Maria gratia plena dominus tecum" ("Hail Mary, full of grace,...
Details: Painted roughly a century after the other works in this gallery, Ter Brugghen’s scene of Christ’s crucifixion draws on the dramatic, emotional appeal of earlier religious art to inspire the private prayers of a Catholic viewer. The Virgin Mary and John the Evangelist, who flank the cross,...
Details: One of the most important surviving examples of fourteenth-century painting from Rimini (on Italy’s Adriatic coast), this panel was one of eight scenes depicting the life of Saint John the Baptist from a now-dismembered altarpiece. Riminese painters of the first half of the fourteenth century were indebted to...
Details: At the Passover of most likely 30 or 33, Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus of Nazareth to death by crucifixion in Jerusalem. The main sources on the crucifixion are the four canonical Christian Gospels. Pilate's role in condemning Jesus to death is also attested by the Roman historian...
