Dummy boards, British or Dutch, circa 1690

Dummy Boards: the Fun Figures of the 1600s

These life-sized painted figures, popular in Europe and colonial America in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, were designed to amuse and confuse.
Saint John the Baptist in Prison Visited by Salome by Guercino

Taking Liberties With Biblical Stories

In the Christian New Testament, Saint John the Baptist and Salome never meet. Why, then, does she appear at the bars of his cell in Guercino’s moody painting?
A detail from Ophelia by John Everett Millais, c. 1851

Elizabeth Siddal, the Real-Life “Ophelia”

A working-class woman with artistic aspirations of her own, Siddal nearly died of pneumonia after posing for John Everett Millais’s iconic painting.
At the Theatre, Prudence Heward, 1928

Who Belonged to the Beaver Hall Group?

An association of Montreal-based artists, the Beaver Hall Group embraced the free-spirited Jazz Age in their work, their habits, and their lifestyles.
The collector of prints, by Edgar Degas, 1866, and A woman ironing, by Edgar Degas, 1873, both with original frames

Framing Degas

The French painter Edgar Degas was Impressionism’s most energetic and inventive frame designer.
Photograph: Art restorer, Claire Wilkins, at work restoring a self-portrait of the Spanish artist, Velasquez, after flooding at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, 1966

Source: Terry Fincher/Getty

Restoration Recipes

Need to clean your sixteenth-century distemper painting? Try a piece of bread (at your own risk).
Leonard de Koningh, Self-portrait as a painter, 1864-73

Did Photography Really Kill Portrait Painting?

While some viewed photography as a competitor for their customers, Dutch portrait painters reaped the benefits of the emerging medium.
Detail from Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez

Who Was the Little Girl in Las Meninas?

A Spanish princess who became a German queen, Margarita Teresa lived a life structured by Catholicism and cut short by consanguinity.
Soap Bubbles by Jean Simeon Chardin, ca.1733

The Soap Bubble Trope

Throughout the history of philosophy, literature, art, and science, people have been fascinated with the shimmering surfaces of soap bubbles.
claude glass

The Claude Glass Revolutionized the Way People Saw Landscapes

Imagine tourists flocking to a famous beauty spot, only to turn around and fix their eyes on its reflection in a tiny dark mirror.