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The Old Masters - Paintings

THE GREAT MASTERS from Giotto to Corot and Manet and later, through their art have reflected the ideas, the thoughts and the style of societies long gone. When we look at an Old Master we see at first hand how people lived at that period, their dress, the interior of their homes, how the countryside looked then but also something of their history. Through their eyes we see the development of their ideas and how their view of the world unfolded.

The earliest painting in this collection is a rare Greek icon that traces its style back one thousand years from the 12th century to the 1st century Hellenistic Roman portraits of Egypt at El-Fayûm and Antinoe.

The gold-background Madonna and Child with saints from the South-East region of Italy shows the influence of the great Florentine Master Giotto. It was painted around the fourteenth century and shows how Italian art was gradually moving away from the influence of Byzantium painting. The Italian High Renaissance is represented by the superb image of a beautiful Florentine woman painted in the 1550s by Ghirlandaio. The eighteenth shows paintings of young girls by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze and by the the Welsh Old-Master Richard Wilson's 1750s portrait of the tragic Miss Wynne.

The Old Master's familiarity with classical art, literature and Old Testament writings is seen in the Judith with the head of Holofernes attributed to Carl Fabritius and The Finding of Moses by Valerio Castello. The Roman legend of Coriolanus, Gnaeus Marcius, by the Bordeaux painter Brascassat and the Three panels, Air, Earth and fire by the Flemish painter Jan van Kessel are other examples of classical themes used by Renaissance and later classical artists.