Charged with saving the immortal souls of the condemned, comforters held tavolette showing the Crucifixion in front of the eyes of those facing execution.

In seventeenth-century Europe, architects adopted styles from the Ottoman empire to create new kinds of social spaces including public baths and coffeehouses.

The offbeat and unexpected Palazzo del Te, designed by Giulio Romano for Federigo II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, has become an icon of Mannerist architecture.

The first exhibition of paintings that would come to be described as Impressionism opened in Paris on April 15, 1874.

Using peach and eggplant emojis as shorthand for sex may seem like a new thing, but Renaissance painters were experts at using produce to imply intercourse.

Rising from the ranks of touring comedies and Wild West shows, the American dancer dreamed of a future of light, movement, and metamorphosis.

These life-sized painted figures, popular in Europe and colonial America in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, were designed to amuse and confuse.

The St. Cuthbert Gospel is the earliest surviving intact European book. Some time around 698, it was slipped into the coffin of a saint.

The inaccuracy of medieval lions may have been a stylistic preference, particularly in a bestiary, or compendium of beasts.

Michelangelo, perhaps the greatest artist the world has produced, wasn't a child prodigy like Mozart. He learned on the job. So maybe there's still hope for the rest of us.