Free downloadable Renaissance Catholic paintings in the public domain.
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! The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book, included in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible, but excluded from the Hebrew canon and assigned by Protestants to the...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This monumental panel probably once decorated a chapel. Both are from a large window in which the Crucifixion was in the center and the Saint Christopher at the right. The third panel, which would have been...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! “Commesso can best preserve antiquity and memory...and can resist all the battles of water and wind and other mishaps of fortune and of time.” Thus Giorgio Vasari wrote of commesso, a newly revived antique technique...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In this painting Gentile da Fabriano combined several different devotional and biblical subjects: the Madonna of Humility, the Nativity, and the Annunciation to the Shepherds. As the Madonna of Humility, the Virgin sits upon the ground,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In his right hand, the Christ child grasps a stem of roses. The beauty and fragrance of roses symbolize heaven, while their thorny stems allude to the crown of thorns and Christ's suffering. The...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! According to the Gospel of Matthew, three Magi, guided by a star, found the newborn Christ and laid gifts before him. Artists throughout the 15th century elaborated considerably upon this biblical account, devoting particular attention to...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The Biblical parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19-21) tells of a man who feasted and celebrated every day, while a beggar named Lazarus sat starving nearby. Dogs came to lick the sores...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Saint Catherine (1347–1380) was the daughter of a prosperous Sienese cloth dyer. At the age of six, she saw a vision of Christ and thereafter dedicated herself to chastity, penance, and good works. She became...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Despite the religious subject, the scale and intricate detail indicate that this painting was not for a church setting. Instead, as an independent work of art, a collector would have admired its artistry and unusual combination...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In this painting, the Archangel Gabriel proclaims the Virgin’s destiny as the mother of Christ. The setting is an ordinary house, but simple objects have symbolic meaning. The lilies represent the Virgin’s purity; the...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Bernardino di Betto, called Pinturicchio, is said to have acquired his nickname ("little painter") because of his small stature, and used it to sign some of his paintings. Born in Perugia, the provincial capital...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! As a Dominican monk, Fra Angelico was not subject to the strict rules of the Florentine painters’ guild. He was thus free to develop a more personal style. This combined strong realism and solid forms with...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Bridget of Sweden (c. 1303 – 23 July 1373); born as Birgitta Birgersdotter, was a mystic and saint, and founder of the Bridgettines nuns and monks after the death of her husband of twenty years. Outside Sweden,...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Seated on an elaborate throne, the Madonna’s weighty majesty emphasizes her role as the Queen of Heaven as she gazes at her infant son. The child, in turn, stares at the viewer. To Christ’s...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Fundamental to Christian belief, the Holy Trinity refers to the three divine persons in God—God the Father, here depicted wearing a papal tiara, God the Son, crucified on the cross, and the Holy Spirit, represented...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The artist has set Christ's birth in a ruined stable, witnessed by shepherds and angels. The candle Joseph holds symbolizes the supremacy of Christ's divine radiance over earthly light. Beyond the overgrown...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The women's upturned, grasping palms beautifully convey their adoration of Christ, tenderly answered by Christ's gesture. Bartolomeo Rigossi used a brilliant yellow to describe the wispy grass and foliage as well as...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! The symbolic family tree of Jesus is depicted here. The tree grows from the body of the sleeping Jesse. He was the ancestor of a family of kings that, according to tradition, included Solomon, David, and...
St. Peter Martyr, also called Peter of Verona, Italian San Pietro Martire or San Pietro da Verona, (born 1205?, Verona [Italy]—died April 6, 1252, near Milan; canonized 1253; feast day April 29), inquisitor, vigorous preacher, and religious founder who, for his militant reformation, was assassinated by a neo-Manichaean sect,...
Saint Cecilia (Latin: Sancta Caecilia), is a Roman martyr venerated in Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and some Lutheran churches, such as the Church of Sweden. She became the patron of music and musicians, it being written that, as the musicians played at her wedding, Cecilia "sang in her heart to...
Jean Bellegambe worked in Douai, in a part of northern France that was once part of the county of Flanders. These panels are the wings of a triptych, a three-paneled folding altarpiece, whose center (now in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels) shows the Virgin and Child enthroned under an...
A gifted follower of Perugino, Lo Spagna expanded on the master’s calm style in numerous works made for Perugia and the surrounding region of Umbria. This panel represents Catherine Benincasa of Siena (1347–1380), who was one of the major religious figures and most influential women of the late...
Jerome and Catherine sit on a grass-covered bench before some rose bushes. The two saints can be identified by their attributes: Jerome with the lion, and Catherine with the sword and the broken wheel. Catherine was the daughter of a king and served as a role model for wealthy courtly...
