The Night Watch
1642 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
A militia company surges out of the shadow with a dog barking and a girl glowing among the men. Varnish, not night, made it dark.
★ 9.2
Browse by time · decade
1640s
1640 – 1649
Showing 56 works across all media from the 1640s
Meditations on First Philosophy
1641 · 59 pages
Descartes sits by a fire and doubts everything, down to whether a demon feeds him the world. What survives is the thinking, and philosophy has argued from there ever since.
★ 7.5
Seaport with the Embarkation of St. Ursula
1641 · National Gallery, London
Saint Ursula is on the quay somewhere, but the real subject is the light coming up the water between the palaces at dawn.
★ 7.3
Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba
1648 · National Gallery, London
The sun sits low over a glassy harbor and floods everything. Turner admired it so much he insisted his own work hang beside it.
★ 7.3
Saint Mary Magdalen with the Smoking Flame
1640 · Louvre, Paris
One oil lamp, one skull in her lap, and a flame she does not take her eyes off. Everything else is dark.
★ 7.1
Mars
1641 · El Prado, Madrid
Mars sits naked and deflated in a plumed helmet with his armor on the floor, looking more like a tired old soldier.
★ 6.8
Christ with St. Joseph in the Carpenter's Shop
1642 · Louvre, Paris
Christ as a boy holds a candle for his father and the flame glows red through his fingers, which is the whole subject.
★ 6.5
The Coronation of the Virgin
1641 · El Prado, Madrid
Father and Son lower the crown together while the group curves into a soft heart shape. Painted for the Spanish queen's private oratory.
★ 6.3
I will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions.
Meditations on First Philosophy · 1641
Triple Portrait of Cardinal de Richelieu
1642 · National Gallery, London
Richelieu appears three times on one canvas so that a sculptor in Rome could carve a bust without ever meeting him.
★ 6.3
The Passions of the Soul
1649 · 165 pages
Wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy, sadness: six primitive passions from which Descartes builds every feeling you have, located in the body's machinery rather than condemned as sins the soul must defeat.
★ 6.3
A Discourse Concerning a New World and Another Planet · 1640
The Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Picture Gallery in Brussels
1647 · El Prado, Madrid
Teniers was the archduke's curator, and he painted the walls tiled with identifiable Titians and Giorgiones as a kind of catalogue.
★ 5.9
The Dream of Saint Joseph
1640 · Musee d'Arts Nantes, Nantes
A child-angel leans toward the sleeping old man, its small fingers glowing translucent where they pass in front of the candle flame.
★ 5.9
Romulus and Remus Given Shelter by Faustulus
1643 · Louvre, Paris
The shepherd carries the twins home to his wife with the she-wolf still nearby. Rome's founding myth as a foundling story.
★ 4.8
None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.
The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates · 1649
Areopagitica · 1644