1530s
Showing 27 works across all media from the 1530s
Venus of Urbino
Titian woke Giorgione's sleeping Venus, brought her indoors, and had her look straight at us, probably to mark a wedding in Urbino.
The Ambassadors
Two men pose with globes, sundials and a lute with a broken string, and a smear on the floor turns into a skull from the side.
The Prince
Machiavelli threw out the question of how a ruler ought to behave and asked how power is taken and kept. His answer, that a prince does better feared than loved, still unsettles people.
Nativity
All the light in the picture comes off the newborn child, and one shepherd throws up a hand against the glare.
Institutes of the Christian Religion
Calvin set all of Protestant belief in order: who God is, what humanity became, and how grace arrives unearned to those God has chosen. Reformed churches have run on this book ever since.
Jupiter and Io
Jupiter has turned himself into a grey cloud, and a dim face and hand come out of the mist to hold her.
Martin Luther
Cranach was Luther's friend and godfather to his children, and his workshop turned out this face by the score for Protestant Germany.
Danae
Cupid pulls back the sheet while two putti sharpen their arrows on a whetstone at the foot of the bed. Painted for the Duke of Mantua.
Portrait of Thomas Cromwell
Cold competence and nothing else. Holbein painted him as a near-pendant to Thomas More, whom Cromwell helped send to the scaffold.
The Conversion of St. Paul
Saul sprawls on the ground with his arm up while the white horse rears above him with something close to ballet in it.
Leda and the Swan (Correggio)
The story runs across the canvas in stages, arrival to departure. A later owner cut Leda's head out in disgust and it was repainted.