Free downloadable Catholic paintings which are in the public domain
Although he was reportedly a prolific painter, this panel is one of only seven paintings by Martin Schongauer in existence today. It belongs to a group of four Andachtsbilder, or devotional paintings, created near the end of his life. In his engravings Schongauer already had explored the theme of the...
With its horizontal format, this biblical scene of classically proportioned figures arranged in graceful poses resembles an ancient Roman frieze. Facial expressions and dramatic gestures serve a narrative purpose, revealing the story for the viewer. Rubens used vivid reds, blues, and yellows to describe shimmering silks and heavy cloaks. On...
In this depiction of Christ’s arduous journey to his own crucifixion, Domenichino situates Christ at the forefront of the composition, gazing sorrowfully out at the viewer. Christ’s oppression and the cruelty of his tormentors are emphasized by the crowded composition, in which the figures seem to bear down...
When King Cyrus of Persia, seen at the center, asked his confidant Daniel why he does not worship the deity Bel, whose lower half can be seen in the shadows, Daniel replied that he worshipped a living god, not an idol. The king insisted that Bel was a living god...
Christ, haggard and sorrowful, weeps copiously. He wears the Crown of Thorns; its vicious spines pierce his forehead and his right eyebrow and extend menacingly outwards, accentuated by the brilliant golden radiance behind him. Blood from his wounds runs through his hair, down the neckline of his cloak and beneath...
As was customary for promising Dutch painters in the 1600s, Gerrit van Honthorst traveled to Italy to complete his artistic training. In Rome he fell under the spell of Caravaggio's revolutionary style and adopted his use of realistic figures and dramatic lighting, known as chiaroscuro. In Italy he...
Drops of blood are visible on Christ's brow as he carries the cross to his Crucifixion. The immediacy of this close-up image invites the viewer to contemplate the pain and meaning of Christ's sacrifice. Associated with Leonardo da Vinci, Marco d'Oggiono subtly manipulated light...
In Giovanni Lanfranco's highly original design, a few large figures stand in a shallow foreground space. Using a low viewpoint and dramatic foreshortening, Lanfranco depicted the figures as if seen from below, imbuing them with monumentality. The powerful composition communicated both to spectators standing far away and to...
This brooding, wild-looking man is identified by some scholars as Saint Onuphrius, a Christian hermit who spent sixty years alone in the Egyptian wilderness, praying and meditating. Onuphrius is commonly depicted as an elderly, almost disturbed man deep in contemplation, covered by his unkempt hair and beard, and clothed usually...
In this painting, the Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist, and Saint Mary Magdalene grieve over the body of Christ while displaying it to the viewer. Although Gerard David and earlier Netherlandish painters often treated the Lamentation as a private devotional subject, this panel was part of a large altarpiece...
Saint Augustine is a giant in many ways. He had a powerful and forceful personality which he used both before and after his conversion. He had a passion for whatever he did, and this showed up in his theological teachings. Yet Augustine was also a man of great love, as...
Gertrude, a Benedictine nun in Helfta, Saxony, was one of the great mystics of the 13th century. Together with her friend and teacher Saint Mechtild, she practiced a spirituality called “nuptial mysticism,” that is, she came to see herself as the bride of Christ. Her spiritual life was a deeply...
This painting was once a panel from the important five-panel altarpiece commissioned by Queen Isabella for the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores near Burgos, site of the royal tombs of her parents and brother. The altarpiece, of which the other panels survive, was likely painted during the artist’s early employment...
Stories of Christ’s childhood and adolescence became increasingly popular during the Counter-Reformation because they were easily understood by a broad public. Rather than taking a story from the Bible, Zurbarán appears to have invented this subject, in which Jesus pricks himself on a crown of thorns he is weaving,...
The artist covered the sides and reverse of this panel with a thin layer of gesso (a type of plaster), allowing the texture of the rough wood to remain visible. He then painted it to resemble porphyry, a beautiful and valuable stone. Source [https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1924.199]...
This small devotional picture by an anonymous 17th-century Venetian artist drew his composition from Guido Reni's large St. Andrew Led to Martyrdom fresco in Rome's Church of San Gregorio al Celio. The CMA painting portrays the central image of Reni's 1608 fresco by Reni....
Not all subjects are easy to identify. This museum long thought that the subject was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, largely because tears are part of the standard representation of this ancient thinker. However, ter Brugghen omits the other crucial key to identifying Heraclitus--a globe over which he weeps. Instead, the...
Bernat Martorell was the greatest painter of the first half of the fifteenth century in Catalonia in northeastern Spain. Depicted here is the most frequently represented episode from the popular legend of Saint George, in which the model Christian knight saves a town and rescues a beautiful princess. Conceived in...
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 subject...
This loosely painted sketch is the preliminary design for an altarpiece in the Church of Saint Ulrich, Vienna. Mary and Joseph have brought the infant Jesus to the temple to be inducted into the Jewish faith; the aged priest Simeon cradles the infant in his arms, turning his gaze to...
Saint Paul and Saint Sirus are panel paintings likely from the same large altarpiece. Panel painting was a lengthy process that required many steps. The panel is a plank of wood that was prepared with many layers of gesso, a glue-size-chalk substance that forms the white base layer of the...
Boucher painted this picture for his patron, Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV. Partly to please the religious faction at court, she commissioned devotional pictures for the chapels in her various residences. She ordered this one of Saint John, her patron saint, for a chapel in the Capuchin...
These panels depicting Saints Anthony the Abbot and Michael originally flanked a central scene of the Madonna and Child with Angels, now lost, to form a triptych. Giovanni di Cosimo de’Medici of Florence commissioned the ensemble in 1457 as a gift to Alfonso V of Aragon. Fra Filippo Lippi,...
This is a rare example of a surviving 15th-century painting from the northern provinces of the Netherlands (present-day Holland). This region had fewer centers of artistic production than the more populous southern Netherlands, and it also experienced substantial destruction of artworks during the iconoclastic outbursts of the mid-16th century. The...
