GIOVANNI MARIA BUTTERI
This signed and dated altarpiece was one of Butteri's most important commissions.  The presence of the Apostles St. Jude, with a club, and St. Simon Zelotes, holding a cross, suggests that the altarpiece may have been painted for the one Tuscan church dedicated to them: Ss. Simone e Guida in Florence.  Built in the thirteenth century, the church was extensively remodeled in the years 1625–30, at which time the principal altarpieces, and presumably the Butteri, were replaced by the Baroque paintings that are still visible there today.

Butteri was a Tuscan Mannerist.  The brilliantly lit, strident colors of the Madonna's and Saints' garments, and the magnificently rendered curtain that the putti hold, display the coloristic effects sought by Mannerist painters.  The attenuated figures as well as the similarity of their features are also stylistic traits that identify Butteri's work.  According to Vasari, Butteri was a student of Bronzino.  Documents attest to his collaboration with Alessandro Allori, Bronzino's principal student, on decorations for the marriage of Francesco I de'Medici and Johanna of Austria in 1565 and on several other occasions.  Butteri is best known for several large altarpieces (similar to the present work) that remain in Tuscany.  Butteri's Madonna and Child Enthroned with Sts. Michael and Lucy in Castelfiorentino, which is similar to the Norton panel in style and composition, features almost identical putti holding a curtain at the top.

Valerio Castello
Valerio Castello's Diana and Actaeon with Pan and Syrinx is an allegorical work that illustrates the theme of Chastity's triumph over Lust, derived from Ovid's Metamorphoses.  On the right, the mythological figures of Diana and Actaeon are accompanied by a pair of nymphs, while on the left, Pan and Syrinx appear with the River god Ladon.  Through their dramatic poses, expressive actions and interlocking glances, the figures appear to engage in conversation.  Theatrical light effects heighten the tension, while bold foreshortening, emotive brushwork, and saturated color lend the painting a sense of disquiet.  Castello painted this work around 1650, at the height of his powers.  At that time his native city, Genoa, reached its zenith, enjoying extraordinary growth founded on international trade and banking.

The seventeenth century also marked the golden age of Genoese painting, a school of painting renowned for its dramatic realism.  Valerio Castello, whose father was the painter Bernardo Castello (about 1557–1629), was extremely prolific in his short lifetime, and his precocious nature led him to study the works of Correggio (about 1494–1534) and Parmigianino (1503–40) at an early age.  Van Dyck, who arrived in Genoa in 1621, provided Valerio Castello with the model of an artist of effortless technical skill.  From Van Dyck, Castello learned a vocabulary of elegant poses and gestures and the force of powerful color juxtapositions.  Many of the features Van Dyck introduced are apparent in Diana and Actaeon, a work of extraordinary dynamism, and a textbook example of Genoese Baroque painting.  A pendant to this work titled The Legend of Saint Genevieve of Brabant is in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut.

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS
In this portrait of 1778, Reynolds depicted Jane, Duchess of Gordon (1749–1812) in a formal pose, dressed in ermine-lined peeress' robes and holding a bejeweled coronet.  The grand manner in which this portrait is painted owes much to the legacy of Sir Anthony van Dyck, an artist whom Reynolds admired.  The painting displays the wealthy and powerful sitter, who was a prominent member of the English aristocracy and confidant of the famous Tory politician William Pitt; she is known to have provided a sympathetic social venue in which political discussions took place.  Reynolds' setting for the Duchess includes architectural features and a grand expanse of crimson drapery that balances the composition and acts as a foil to the Duchess' attire.  The broadly painted, mute simplicity of the setting is in direct contrast to the exquisitely detailed, elaborately rendered clothing of the sitter which, together with her direct gaze, makes the Duchess the focal point of the composition.

Sir Joshua Reynolds was a painter, collector and writer.  He was the foremost portrait painter in England in the 18th century, the second president of the Royal Academy of Art, and the author of fourteen discourses on painting, which are classics in the theory of art.  As a young man he spent two years in Rome studying the works of ancient and High Renaissance masters, especially Michelangelo.  These studies had a formative influence on his style: the posture and attitudes of his sitters, frequently based on prototypes original to the Old Masters or Antique sculpture, were intended to invoke classical values and to enhance the dignity of his sitters.

In December of 1883, Monet traveled to France's Mediterranean coast with Pierre Auguste Renoir and visited Paul Cézanne at his home in Aix-en-Provence.  The natural beauty of the region inspired Monet, and the following month he returned to focus upon his art. He settled in the Italian town of Bordighera for ten weeks, where he produced thirty-eight paintings.  The Norton's painting depicts the gardens of landowner Francesco Moreno, who welcomed Monet.  The Norman painter considered the gardens a "pure fairyland"; indeed, historians credit Monet's experience in Bordighera as the impetus for his own gardens at Giverny, as well as later painting excursions to Antibes (1888) and Venice (1908).

PAUL GAUGUIN
This exceptional work was painted in the final weeks of 1889, in the immediate wake of Gauguin's two-month, disastrous association with Vincent van Gogh in the south of France. There, Van Gogh had hoped, they and other artists would create a kind of utopia far removed from the urban corruption of Paris. Alone, however, the two artists clashed over artistic purpose and methodology: psychologically destabilized, Van Gogh severed part of his right ear, while Gauguin hastily retreated to the familiarity of the artistic community at Pont-Aven, in Brittany. In written correspondence to Van Gogh, Gauguin referred to this painting as Christ in the Garden of Olives, by which he meant the garden identified as Gethsemane (meaning "oil press"), located at the foot of the Mount of Olives and now within the city of Jerusalem.  Gauguin depicted himself as the tormented, prayerful Jesus Christ, deserted by his disciples (the sleeping figures in the middleground) shortly before his betrayal by Judas Iscariot.  The facial features are those of Gauguin while the lurid red-orange hair signals Van Gogh, thus evoking the tragedy of their failure to forge an alliance and their shared experience of rejection by critics, dealers, and collectors of modern art. 

GIORGIO DE CHIRICO
In The Sailors’ Barracks, balls, a baton, a folded card, a clay pipe and other objects lie at rest as if their users had suddenly been interrupted in their activities.  Their meaning remains a mystery compounded by the abrupt shift from the tipped plane in the foreground to the distant view of an architectural arcade receding into space. In the shadows far below on the left, two anonymous figures stand on the street dwarfed by their silent environment. Despite the clarity of each object in de Chirico's painting, the seemingly unstable planes as well as the disorienting spaces enhance the disquieting sense of the work.  Giorgio de Chirico painted The Sailors’ Barracks at the outbreak of World War I; the still life is one of three painted in 1914 evoking world events that filled the artist with anxiety and dread.

As an art student in Munich, Germany, de Chirico was attracted to painters of myth and fantasy.  He also became familiar with the writings of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose "mysterious and solitary poetry" fascinated him.  Inspired by Nietzsche and other philosophers, de Chirico began to paint everyday objects as a way of exploring their inner significance.  He felt he could embody the mysterious reality of things best by juxtaposing objects within irrational environments.  Between 1911 and 1917, de Chirico's paintings like The Sailors’ Barracks established a dream-like imagery that would inspire Surrealist artists through the following decades.

HENRI MATISSE
This is one of nearly fifteen drawings, oil sketches, and finished paintings made within a period of about ten months—between November 1916 and mid or late summer 1917—whose subject is the beautiful Italian model known to history only by her first name, Laurette (as Matisse spelled it). She was depicted in a variety of attitudes and guises from casually intimate to highly stylized, from informally relaxed to overtly self-conscious. Matisse was obviously obsessed with Laurette's dark beauty and his studies of her are progressively more revealing of his feelings: she became, over time, the conduit of the artist's remarkable transformation as he abandoned the abstraction and austerity of the so-called Experimental Period (notably influenced by Cubism) in favor of the more sensuous and graceful efflorescence of the Nice Period (from 1918) for which Matisse remains, perhaps, best known and most admired.

Having played a short but intensely crucial role in Matisse's artistic development, Laurette disappeared just as suddenly as she had appeared on the scene; it is entirely possible that like millions worldwide she was swept away by the influenza pandemic which raged in the years 1918 and 1919. 

PABLO PICASSO
The Red Foulard is a brilliant and representative example of a style and type of subject that Picasso was exploring during 1924.  Picasso continued the theme in several major works, which have in common the table, tablecloth, fruit bowl and fruit, sometimes with other foodstuffs, and a guitar, or mandolin.  As in other works in the same group, a major decorative detail is the printed pattern of the table covering.  Picasso represents what may be fruit in the bowl, and biscuits on the cloth, in the same flat, rounded shapes.  Neither truth of color nor pictorial reality concerned him when depicting these foodstuffs; rather, he wanted to explore the decorative effect and contrast of red and green.

Pablo Picasso's vision has helped to define the twentieth century.  His influence can be traced through all the great "isms."  Though his work may not resemble the world we see, it is rooted in reality.  His works, despite all the other styles of the twentieth century, remain fresh and original to our contemporary gaze.

GEORGES BRAQUE
Around 1934 Braque utilized vivid colors in a series of still lifes with objects gathered on tables covered with tablecloths.  In Still Life on Red Tablecloth, the richly orchestrated synthesis of form, color, and rhythm create a perfect, vibrant harmony.  Braque's sense of order and refinement dominate the whole composition.  Though the design at first appears to be all oranges and yellows, much of the painting consists of exquisitely colorful grays.  Braque's interest in the patterns of woodwork and cloth, as well as his less localized leitmotif of geometric decoration, reaches its apex in this work.

Braque produced this magnificent painting when he was fifty-four and an acknowledged master.  Behind him are the years of house painting and study in the Paris academies, his experience exhibiting with the Fauves, and his explorations of Cubism.  Braque had created his own synthesis of styles, in which Cubist form and "tilting" of objects is fused with an almost Fauve delight in exhilarating color relationships.

MARC CHAGALL
In 1944, Chagall's wife Bella died suddenly, deeply shocking and traumatizing the artist. Bella had appeared in many of his works in celebration of their marriage and love. In 1945, he began a series of paintings devoted to the memory of Bella and their marriage. Anniversary Flowers seems to be the culmination of the theme. Chagall pictures the imaginary and symbolic reunification of himself and his bride, along with personal attributes such as the view of his hometown Vitebsk, and the flowers of love. The picture also deals with the victory of the lovers over separation. Love triumphs over death, as Chagall embraces the ghost-like spirit of his wife.

Marc Chagall was born Moshe Segal in Vitebsk, Russia. He was raised as a Hassidic Jew, a sect which lays emphasis on dreams, holidays and joy. Chagall's often joyous and humorous paintings frequently feature elements of Vitebsk's skyline, folk rituals, occupations, pastimes, music and art. In combining classic Hassidic and folkloristic motifs with twentieth-century innovations, Chagall had the power of appealing to all people.