Free downloadable Renaissance Catholic paintings in the public domain.
Details: Christ and the Virgin are shown pleading with God the Father for mercy on behalf of eight small figures, perhaps members of a prominent Florentine family. In the tradition of hieratic scale, the divine figures are portrayed many times larger than the mortals, who kneel in adoration and prayer....
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: According to all four canonical Gospels, immediately after the Last Supper, Jesus took a walk to pray. Each Gospel offers a slightly different account regarding narrative details. The gospels of Matthew and Mark identify this place of prayer as Gethsemane. Jesus was accompanied by three Apostles: Peter, John and...
Details: The Three Marys (also spelled Maries) are women mentioned in the canonical gospels' narratives of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, several of whom were, or have been considered by Christian tradition, to have been named Mary (the most common name for Jewish women of the period). The...
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: Assumption, in Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic theology, the notion or (in Roman Catholicism) the doctrine that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was taken (assumed) into heaven, body and soul, following the end of her life on Earth. There is no mention of the Assumption in the New Testament,...
Details: This is an illustration of the eighth article of faith (I believe in the Holy Spirit) of the Apostles' Creed. Mary and the twelve apostles are sitting in a room. Tongues of fire burn above the heads of some of them. The Holy Spirit, in the form of...
Details: This is a half-length print of the Virgin Mary, on a cloud, with a halo of (oxidized) silver. This is likely a relief/woodcut. Woodcuts are probably the oldest method of printing – the application of ink to the saved image areas which are raised – the non-image areas being removed...
Description0:00/0:261×Details: The fifteen metalcuts, or “dotted prints,” that form this Passion suite constitute one of the most complete block books in existence. It is possible that the series at one time included as many as nineteen images, each exquisitely hand-colored with the biblical text inscribed on...
Virgin and Child with Four Saints Cleveland Museum of Art0:00/0:281×Details: The Virgin and Child appear with Saints Catherine, John the Evangelist, Jodocus, and Mary Magdalene. Symbols of the Virgin’s purity and of Christ’s death and redemptive mission are included in the scene: the wall,...
The Ascension 16th Century by Dosso Dossi Public Domain Bible Painting SD Cason Ca0:00/1:081×Details: The Ascension of Jesus is the Christian teaching that Christ physically departed from Earth by rising into Heaven, in the presence of eleven of his apostles. According to the New Testament narrative,...
Pentecost Bartolomeo di Tommaso Mia0:00/0:391×Details: In this scene from the New Testament, the twelve apostles were gathered in a room after Christ's death and ascension into heaven. Suddenly there appeared on each of them tongues of fire. They were filled with the Holy Spirit,...
P5020:00/0:561×Details: This was once the main panel of a large altar piece consisting of many parts. It was painted by Mariotto di Nardoex in 1408 for the church of San Stefano in a rural district outside of Florence, Italy. In this scene the Virgin Mary is...
