Free downloadable Catholic paintings which are in the public domain
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Coronation of the Virgin celebrates the culminating scene in the narrative cycle of the life of the Virgin. The subject follows Mary’s ascent into heaven after her death. Surrounded by a choir of music-making...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! These pinnacles were originally set on top of a multipanel altarpiece that has now been lost. The angels' gestures and glances suggest that they were placed to the left and right of a central image....
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! A saint, holding an abbot or bishop’s crozier, blesses a kneeling figure, probably the donor who commissioned the window. It forms a pair with another panel showing Saint Fiacre, also owned by the Museum. This...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In Christian theology, the Harrowing of Hell (Latin: Descensus Christi ad Inferos, "the descent of Christ into Hell") is the descent of Jesus into Hell (or Hades), a period of time between the Crucifixion...
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! While Mary is most often depicted wearing a blue shawl, Ethiopian artists in the mid-16th century began painting the shawl red, a practice that related to their study of Cretan icons. The Ge'ez inscriptions...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This large icon, meant to be seen by many people, was carried in church processions on holy days. The subject of Christ crowned with thorns and flanked by tormentors was modeled after Ethiopia's famous...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This is an important Ethiopian Orthodox icon that was once owned by a parsonage. On the proper right panel it depicts the gruesome scene of St. George being chopped into pieces below the twelve apostles and...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This image shows the Holy Family with Mary Magdalene. The Christ Child extends his arm to Mary Magdalene who kneels by the child. On the floor is a skull (which represents Christ’s victory over death)...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In the spring of 1890 Berthe Morisot and her husband, Eugène Manet, rented a house with a garden overlooking the Seine River in the rural French town of Mézy. Morisot worked in the attic studio while...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Lorenzo was born in Manila of a Chinese father and a Filipino mother, both Christians. Thus he learned Chinese and Tagalog from them, and Spanish from the Dominicans whom he served as altar boy and sacristan....
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! In the crumbling remains of a Roman temple, a monk prays at the foot of an altar. Absorbed in his devotions, he is unaware of three young women sneaking inside to steal flowers from a makeshift...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Surrounded by a diverse array of onlookers, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius kneels and prepares to raise the holy cross. Barefoot and clad in drab robes, Heraclius has abandoned his fine clothing in order to pass through...
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! The Virgin Mary, hieratic and still, looks out toward the viewer while gently supporting Christ with her left arm. The smiling infant gazes lovingly toward her and playfully stretches out his arm, grabbing the edge of...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! God the Father sits enthroned, holding the crucified Christ with the Holy Spirit between them, all three dominating the composition. Together they represent the Trinity, the central doctrine of the Christian faith, in which all three...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! A cut-away wall reveals a small bedroom where an angel appears to Pope Sergius in his sleep. The angel tells Sergius that the bishop Saint Lambert has been assassinated and Sergius is to appoint a new...
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! St. Philip Neri was a Christian missionary and founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, a community of Catholic priests and lay brothers. Giovanni Domenico Ferretti (Giandomenico), also called Giandomenico d'Imola (15 June 1692...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Jerome (c. AD 347–420) studied Greek and Latin literature in Rome, but eventually pursued theology, perceiving his conduct as corrupt and sinful. Around AD 374, Jerome had a vision of the Last Judgment in which...
