Art History & Visual Analysis

Research-based references on historical paintings.

ArtFX collects close readings of historical paintings — provenance, technique, symbolism, and visual analysis. Each entry draws on primary sources, museum catalogues, and the work of art historians, with high-resolution imagery for study.

Featured paintings

• Portrait of Cecilia de Madrazo Fortuny — Giovanni Boldini
• Invocation — Frederic Leighton
• Place des Pyramides — Giuseppe de Nittis
• The Monastery of the Caves near Nizhny Novgorod — Aleksey Savrasov
• The Letter of Introduction — Sir David Wilkie

About

ArtFX is maintained as an independent reference for historical works of European painting from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. Content is drawn from public-domain scholarship and the original artists' archives.