fuck yeah art history

Veiled Lady
Raffaelo Monti
c. 1860
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN, USA

This is an amazing execution of trompe l’oeil. I can hardly believe this is pure marble.

Victory or The Genius of Victory
Michelangelo Buonarroti
c. 1525-1530
Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy

Check out the figura serpentinata on this sculpture. (Sorry contrapposto, we love you, but you’re just not going to cut it here.)

Torso of Belvedere (Apollonius of Athens)
Anonymous (Hellenistic-Greek)
1st cent. B.C.
marble
62 1/2 inches

Apollo and Daphne
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Marble
1622-1625
Galleria Borghese, Rome

From the Borghese Gallery website:

Gian Lorenzo Bernini created an unpreviousd masterpiece for Cardinal Scipione Borghese depicting the chaste nymph Daphne being turned into a laurel tree, pursued in vain by Apollo god of light.

This life-size marble sculpture, begun by Bernini at the age of twenty-four and executed between 1622 and 1625, has always been housed in the same villa, but originally stood on a lower and narrower base set against the wall near the stairs. Consequently anyone entering the room first saw Apollo from behind, then the fleeing nymph appeared in the process of metamorphosis: brak covers most of her body, but according to Ovid’s lines, Apollo’s hand can still feel her heart beating beneath it.Thus the scene ends by Daphne being transformed into a laurel tree to escape her divine aggressor.