Category: Eye Candy for Today

‘Twixt Venus and Bacchus, Lawrence Alma-Tadema. In the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Click “Explore Object” or Download.

The Old Plum, attributed to Kano Sansetsu, ink, color and gold on gilded paper, 1645 (Edo period). This wonderfully gnarled old tree, portrayed across four sliding door panels, is almost a landscape — or a world — in itself. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Click Fullscreen, then zoom or use download arrow.

Trajan column with two Dacian wars (approximate title), Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Comics expert Scott McCloud has suggested that this kind of display (the physical carved versions that continue around the column) qualify as “comics”, i.e. pictures in sequence that tell a story. [Via Bibliodyssey]

Landscape: Shinnecock, Long Island, William Merritt Chase. Link is to Google Art Project, click in lower right for zoom controls. Original is in Princeton University Art Museum.

View from the Artist’s Studio in Alservorstadt toward Dornbach, Jakob Alt. Alt treats us to a simultaneous landscape and interior. In the Albertina, Vienna. Use zoom and fullscreen controls in lower right of image. Also on Google Art Project.

Rain in an Oak Forest, Ivan Shishkin (from here).