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Kress Collection

Gasparo Mola, Vincenzo Gonzaga, 1562‒1612, 4th Duke of Mantua 1587 [obverse], n.d., bronze. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1957.14.956.a

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Gasparo Mola, Saint George and the Dragon [reverse], n.d., bronze. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1957.14.956.b

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Matteo Pagani, Tommaso Rangone, 1493‒1577, Physician of Ravenna [obverse], 1562, bronze. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1957.14.1096.a

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Matteo Pagani, Jupiter as an Eagle Bringing the Infant Hercules to Juno [reverse], 1562, bronze. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1957.14.1096.b

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Felice Antonio Casone, Dionisio Ratta of Bologna, died 1597 [obverse], 1592, bronze. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1957.14.1070.a

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Felice Antonio Casone, Inscription [reverse], 1592, bronze. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1957.14.1070.b

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Feilce Antonio Casone, Lavinia Fontana, 1552‒1614, Bolognese Painter [obverse], 1611, bronze. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1957.14.1071.a

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Cast in low relief, a woman with hair streaming wildly up and away from her face and wearing a gag covering her mouth sits and paints at an easel on this round bronze medallion. The woman faces our left in profile on a chair with a scrolling back and arms. She wears a long gown with loose, elbow-length sleeves. One foot is braced against the foot of the easel, and the other rests on the floor near a rectangular paint palette and paint brushes. The woman rests a maulstick down in front of her legs and holds a paintbrush up to the surface on the easel. Text in a border around the edge of the medal reads, “PERTE STATO GIOIOSO MIMANTENE.” Spiraling scrolls, a compass, and a square are at the bottom center of the border.

Felice Antonio Casone, Lavinia Fontana Painting [reverse], 1611, bronze. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1957.14.1071.b

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Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Christ Cleansing the Temple, 1616‒1634, oil on canvas. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

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A young woman plays a small pipe organ while a winged angel holds up a piece of sheet music in this horizontal painting. A strong light source illuminates the scene from our right, creating deep shadows in the dark background. Both the woman and angel have pale skin, flushed cheeks, and light brown hair. Shown from the knees up and taking up the left half of the painting, the woman’s body is angled to our right as she sits at the organ, which is near the right edge of the composition. Her hair is pulled back into a braid, and wisps fall on her forehead. Her skin is smooth, and her head tilts down toward the organ. Her cherry-red dress has a squared neckline and olive-green sleeves over a white shirt. The voluminous sleeves are pushed back over her forearms as she rests her fingertips on the keys of the organ. Gazing toward the woman, the angel has short, curly hair, silvery gray wings, and wears a topaz-blue garment. Two lines of music on the paper the angel holds have notes written in and one staff is empty. The small organ is angled away from us so we see one narrow end and the row of low pipes along its back. The dark brown background lightens behind the young woman’s head.

Orazio Gentileschi and Giovanni Lanfraco, Saint Cecilia and an Angel, c. 1617/1618 and c. 1621/1627, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.73

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Domenichino, The Madonna of Loreto Appearing to Saint John the Baptist, Saint Eligius, and Saint Anthony Abbot, c. 1618‒1620, oil on canvas. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

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Orazio Gentileschi, Portrait of a Young Woman as a Sibyl, c. 1620, oil on canvas. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Samuel H. Kress Collection

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Possibly School of Guido Reni, Judith, c. 1620, oil on canvas. Birmingham Museum of Art, Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

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Shown from the waist up, an elderly, balding, light-skinned man with a bushy white beard sits behind a table, facing us, in front of a winged angel who looks on in this shadowy, horizontal painting. The man sits with his body angled slightly to our right, and he turns his head to look in the opposite direction. His eyes are sunk in shadow under deeply furrowed brows, set in his lined face. His sparse, gray and white hair is tousled. He wears only a scarlet-red cloth draped across his lap and over his sinewy left arm, on our right. His open left hand is raised, palm up, at shoulder height. In his other hand, he holds a pen, hovering over a partially unwound scroll. His forearm rests on an open book beneath the scroll. He looks over his right shoulder at the curly-haired angel with snow-white wings. The angel wears a flowing, light blue robe with a golden yellow cloth draped around the chest and over the shoulders. Softly smiling, the backlit angel leans toward the man, face deep in shadow. With arms lifted, one hand gestures with a slightly crooked finger, pointing beyond the picture’s border to our left. In the other hand, the angel holds a golden horn in the dusky background behind the man’s left shoulder. Behind the man and angel and to our right, a single candle sits on two books lying in an arched wall niche. On the desk closest to us are a crumpled cloth on a book, a shiny rust-brown ball, a pair of eyeglasses, an inkpot, an hourglass, and a second book, to our right. Light coming from our upper left starkly illuminates the two people against the shadowed, earth-brown background.

Simon Vouet, Saint Jerome and the Angel, c. 1622/1625, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.52

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This free-standing, white marble sculpture shows the head, shoulders, and upper chest of a balding, bearded man. In this photograph, his body faces us and he looks straight ahead. Bushy eyebrows arch low over deeply set eyes, and his forehead hollows inward at his temples. He has high cheekbones and the skin of his cheeks draws slightly in. His thin lips are set in a straight line within a full beard. His high-necked robe falls slightly open over his chest and is cut also away over the shoulders to show the crinkled fabric of the garment beneath. The bottom edge of the sculpture curves upward in a very shallow U across the bottom, and is supported by a square pedestal foot decorated with scroll designs. The background behind the bust lightens from charcoal gray along the top edge to pale gray across the bottom, and the sculpture casts a shadow behind its base.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Monsignor Francesco Barberini, c. 1623, marble. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.102

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We look slightly down onto a group of people gathered along the bank of a river that winds around a copse of tall trees to our left, past a hill to our right, and into the deep distance in this horizontal landscape painting. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the painting. More than a dozen people gather to converse in pairs or trios, or work loading a ship in the lower right corner of the composition. Most of the people seem to be men, except for two women who stand near a man who gestures to our left at the lower center of the painting. The people we can see have light or tanned skin. The men loading the boat to our right wear pants and shirts in navy blue, gray, tan, or crimson red. Men wearing hats and capes over suits near the lower center, and the women wear clothing in olive green, butter yellow, petal pink, coral red, or gray. Goods are strewn along the riverbank closest to us, including potted flowering plants to our left, a jumble of chairs, tables, and musical instruments nearby, and collections of wooden barrels to our right and in the lower left corner. Two more boats are moored at the shore in front of the grove of tall, dark green, leafy trees that take up the left third of the composition. The sage-green surface of the river curves to our right, to a tree-covered hill with a watermill at its base. A stone structure with a large, central, round tower sits along the top of that hill. The river continues to wind into the deep distance, where towns nestle along the bases of rolling, slate-blue mountains along the horizon. The sky above is pale yellow along the horizon and deepens to pale blue above. Smoke-gray clouds sweeping in from the right are lit bright cream-white where the sun catches the edges. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he had written his name on the side of the boat in the lower left corner, though the inscription appears to be incomplete: “CLAVDIO o I Vo 16 9 OM.”

Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Merchants, c. 1629, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.44

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Andrea di Lione, copy after Nicolas Poussin, Adoration of the Golden Calf, 1626‒1629, oil on canvas. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

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Jusepe de Ribera, A Greek Sage, c. 1630, oil on canvas. The University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tuscon, Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

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Jusepe de Ribera, Saint Bartholomew, c. 1630, oil on canvas. Birmingham Museum of Art, Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

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Two pale-skinned women wearing jewel-toned blue, pink, and yellow togas sit on the ground at the foot of a stone building, with three, winged, child-like putti flying nearby in this horizontal painting. The women take up most of the left half of the painting while the building behind them spans nearly three-quarters of the composition. A sliver of landscape is visible beyond the building to our right. Both women have dark, ash-brown hair wrapped back around diadems, long, straight noses, dark eyes, and smooth skin. Their cheeks are flushed, and their dark pink lips are parted. To our left, the first woman sits with her body facing our right in profile, and she turns to look at us from the corners of her eyes. Six silver stars line the sky-blue diadem in her hair. Her voluminous white shift falls off the shoulder closer to us, and she wears a swath of sapphire-blue drapery over her other arm and lap. One foot, wearing a yellow sandal, emerges from under the hem of her robe. She leans the elbow closer to us on a silver sphere, which comes a bit higher than her waist. Her other hand rests on the shoulder of the woman next to her. The second woman sits with her legs angled to our right, and she turns her face back to look at the first woman. She wears a butter-yellow garment under a rose-pink toga, and one foot, wearing a blue sandal, rests on the dirt ground. A baby-blue ribbon is tied through her hair, around a gold coronet. Her hands rest on a book in her lap. The partial word “odiss” is written along the edges of the pages facing us. Three pudgy angels with small blue wings flutter near the second woman, to our right. The putti have short, brown or blond, curly hair. Sashes in golden yellow, pink, or blue are tied around one shoulder and their opposite hips. They hold up three crowns of leaves. The building immediately behind the women and putti is parchment white streaked with brown. A tall foundation supports two columns, the base of which are near the top edge of the painting. A few plants grow out of the crevices, and a bush with white and light blue flowers grows behind the woman in blue, to our left. A landscape extends into the distance to our right, with rolling green hills, trees, and far-off, ice-blue mountains along the horizon. The sky above has apricot-peach and gray clouds against a pale blue sky.

Simon Vouet and Studio, The Muses Urania and Calliope, c. 1634, oil on wood. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.61

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Jusepe de Ribera, Immacualte Conception, 1637, oil on canvas. Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina, Samuel H. Kress Collection

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Guido Reni, Portrait of a Lady as a Sibyl, c. 1640, oil on canvas. Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Gift from the Samuel H. Kress Study Collection

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Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, The Voyage of Jacob, 1640, oil on canvas. Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

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Claude Lorrain, View of Tivoli at Sunset, c. 1642-1644, oil on canvas. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

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Circle of Jusepe de Ribera, Saint Bartholomew, 1643, oil on canvas. El Paso Museum of Art, Texas, Samuel H. Kress Collection

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Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Allegory of Vanity, 1647‒1649, oil on canvas. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas city, Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

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