Free downloadable Catholic paintings which are in the public domain
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 Christian theology of the Trinity states that there is one God who exists in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine beings: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, who are three different individuals sharing one homoousion. The three persons define who God is in this...
Details: Joseph of Copertino was a Christian mystic and saint who was an Italian Conventual Franciscan monk. He was claimed to be extraordinarily unclever, but prone to miraculous levitation and vivid ecstatic visions. As a toddler, Joseph began to experience ecstatic visions, which he would continue to experience throughout his...
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: Saint George and the Monster is a tale about Saint George taming and destroying a dragon that wanted human sacrifices. According to legend, the dragon used to exact tribute from peasants. When they ran out of cattle and trinkets for the dragon, they began sacrificing a person once a...
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: Kenyon Cox was a painter, illustrator, muralist, writer, and teacher from the United States. Cox was an early and influential instructor at the Art Students League of New York. He created the League's logo, which has the motto Nulla Dies Sine Linea (No Day Without a Line)...
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: According to the New Testament, Jude was one of Jesus' Twelve Apostles. He is commonly identified as Thaddeus, but he is also known as Judas Thaddaeus, Jude Thaddaeus, Jude of James, or Lebbaeus. He is sometimes confused with Jesus' brother Jude, but he is distinct from Judas...
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: Sir Anthony van Dyck (22 March 1599 – 9 December 1641) was a Flemish Baroque painter who rose to prominence in England after achieving success in the Southern Netherlands and Italy. Saint Peter was one of Jesus Christ's Twelve Apostles and one of the early Church's...
Details: When Nicolás Enríquez painted this copy of the Virigin of Guadalupe in 1773, it was the most widely venerated sacred image in New Spain. Here, the miraculous image is encircled by four scenes that attest to its divine origin. They record the Virgin’s three appearances to the Indian...
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 intense portrait depicts Fernando Niño de Guevara (1541–1609), who in 1596 was named cardinal and is dressed as such here. In 1599 he became Inquisitor General of Spain but resigned in 1602 to serve the rest of his life as Archbishop of Seville. The painting probably dates...
Details: Saint Anthony Abbot's test of faith at the hands of a clutch of demons is represented here in a charming, if somewhat naive, Late Gothic style. Dressed as an abbot, the saint holds a crosier, which terminates in a tau cross and a mendicant's bell;...
Details: Tarchiani transforms a troubling subject—the thirteenth-century founder of the Dominican order flagellating himself—into a serene, meditative composition. With the attention of a still-life painter, he isolates a series of captivating motifs, including the linearity of the altarpiece viewed in profile contrasted with the soft folds of Dominic’...
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: Simone Martini was one of the leading painters of his time, whose highly refined technique and descriptive powers were unequalled in Europe and earned the praise and friendship of the Italian poet Petrarch (1304–1374). This panel, together with a related work depicting Saint Ansanus and a third panel...
Details: This work belongs to the genre of "statue painting," that is, painted simulacra of sacred images. As a "true likeness" of a cult image, it was believed to possess the miraculous powers of the original, a sculpture of Christ the Nazarene venerated in the Cuzco...
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,...
