If you're extremely interested in art, you presumably already know about Olga's Gallery, one of the web's largest and most accessible collections. I've been going there for years whenever I felt the need, as I sometimes do, to look at paintings, or whenever I need to follow up a reference to a particular work of art. You can search by artist, country, movement, or name.
Clicking this link will take you to the gallery for Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), one of my favorite painters. Clicking this one will take you to Nicolas Poussin's dark and enigmatic scene from Christ's last supper (The Eucharist, painted in 1647), my very favorite. I love the expression on young John's (I assume it is young John's) face.
Poussin is one of my favorite painters; even when he's on a familiar topic, he always includes enigmatic details (excellent inspiration for the imagination). For example, consider The Holy Family on Steps. What on earth is Joseph up to? While Mary, St. Anne, and the boys are brilliantly illuminated, he is back there in the shadows, hunched over something he is writing or drawing, with the light falling only on his bare foot---a rather tense foot, so you know he's really intent on whatever it is he's doing. I love Joseph almost as much as I love John in The Eucharist.
In the foreground are what looks at first like the bowl of fruit and flowers my grandmother used to keep on her table; a vase filled with some sort of dark substance; and a golden box. I can only assume that they represent the gold, frankincense, and myrrh which according to the legend were brought to Jesus by the eastern magi, but are they? (I'm sure an art historian could tell me more, but do I really want to know know?)
After all, this is the man who painted the unsettling "The Shepherds of Arcadia," which features so prominently in all the legends swirling around Rennes-le-Chateau. Every time I look at that picture, the shepherdess's expression looks different to me.
You can see from his self-portrait that he was an intense, sardonic individual (or wished to be taken for such). Whether or not it's so, he looks as if he was a Man with a Secret. Notice the Masonic (?) pinkie ring and the painted lady in the background (who looks disconcertingly three-dimensional). I think I might actually be a little bit in love with Poussin... I would love to read a novel about a respectable 21st Century lady who falls in love with Poussin's portrait.
If you don't care for Poussin, you might enjoy some of these other painters. Here's a list of OG's current top 20:
Claude Monet
Rembrandt van Rijn
Henri Matisse
Michelangelo
Leonardo da Vinci
Edgar Degas
Rene Magritte
Vincent Van Gogh
Joan Miro
Paul Gauguin
Wassily Kandinsky
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Paul Cezanne
Raphael
Caravaggio
Hieronymus Bosch
Diego Velázquez
Max Ernst
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