Entrance to the Jardin Turc
During the years that he worked on this intricately detailed painting of a Parisian crowd, Louis-Léopold Boilly lived in the rue Meslay, about 10 minutes from the café scene depicted.

Two Studies of a Seated Nude with Long Hair
Although made as a life study for a painting, Gustav Klimt considered this drawing a finished work of art. The sinuous curves of the figures hint at the artist's identification of women with water, a common theme in turn-of-the-century art.

Portrait of a Young Woman Reclining
Made at a turning point in his career, this portrait signals a change in Klimt's artistic approach from academic realism to the mysterious, erotic Symbolism for which he is best known.

Sir James Gray, Second Baronet
Rosalba Carriera's pastel portrait exemplifies the virtuosity of the artist's technique; deft strokes of the crayon suggest the tactility and texture of a variety of materials, ranging from the soft velvet of the jacket to the fine, almost transparent lace decorating the shirt front.

Landscape with the Temptation of Saint Anthony
Roeland Savery's innovations, particularly the introduction of alpine scenery, revitalized the stylized approach to natural subjects. In this work, he created a captivating mountain landscape which transformed a popular theme into a celebration of nature's magnificence.

Dancing Faun
With tiny horns and a small goat's tail, Pietro Cipriani's bronze Faun has always been displayed indoors and has therefore retained much of the freshness of its original appearance.

Venus de' Medici
Pietro Cipriani's bronze of the Roman goddess of Love is based on a Hellenistic statue that has been on display in in Florence for several hundred years.

Sphinx
Auguste Rodin usually sketched his models without taking his eyes off the figure or looking down at the sheet of paper. In this case, the artist first incised the figure's silhouette before using the pencil or the brush.

Gospel Book
Created in the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, this striking manuscript is illuminated in the so-called Gunda Gundé style. The frontispiece with the Virgin and Child represents the centrality of Mary in the Ethiopian religious tradition.

Sarcophagus representing a Dionysiac Vintage Festival
This Roman sarcophagus depicts a delightful scene of Erotes—fat, chubby children—industriously gathering and stomping grapes. This mythological representation of the Vindemia, a rural wine festival, exemplifies the importance of wine-making in the ancient world.

A Winter Scene with Two Gentlemen Playing Kolf
This lively drawing depicts a variety of figures enjoying the winter landscape, including two men playing kolf in the foreground. This scene is an exceptional example of the type of winter landscape popularized by Avercamp and highly sought-after by collectors at the time in Holland.

Arii Matamoe (The Royal End)
Made on Paul Gauguin's first trip to Tahiti, this painting depicts a morose subject that tropical hues and a lively composition only partly diffuse: a decapitated human head. Inspired mostly by the artist's romantic fantasies of native Polynesian culture, the work is also rooted in a real event—the funeral of a Tahitian king.

The Vexed Man
One of a series of 69 portrait busts or "character heads," this sculpture reflects the intellectual concerns of artists and scholars during the Enlightenment era, when a surge of interest in the sciences occurred.

Illustrated Vita Christi, with devotional supplements
This rare manuscript contains over 100 illuminations from the 12th and 15th centuries. The 51 miniatures dating from the 12th century likely served as an elaborate pictorial preface to a psalter, an important genre of English illumination. The images depict the life of Christ in rich detail.

Coast View with the Abduction of Europa
Unaware that he is the god Jupiter in disguise, Europa rests atop a white bull just before he abducts her across the waves. Claude Lorrain uses Ovid's classic tale to showcase an idealized landscape, from his harmonious composition to the meticulously painted flowers in the foreground.

Eve ('The Nightmare')
Paul Gauguin often infused his Polynesian-inspired art with Western European motifs, including a rather unorthodox, personal interpretation of Christian morality. In this rare double-sided drawing made near the end of his life, a young Tahitian girl doubles as a sinful Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Northumberland Bestiary
For the medieval reader, a bestiary functioned as a compendium of morality tales, because animals were thought to reflect various aspects of God's divine plan. This rare English bestiary was created in the 13th century, when illustrated encyclopedias of animals were extremely popular.

Balsamarium in the Form of a Boxer's Head
Made in the shape of a boxer's head, this vessel would have originally held ointments or oils. Athletes often used such unguents after practice or competition, thus, the head of a boxer is an especially appropriate choice for this type of vessel.

Portrait of the Marquise de Miramon, née Thérèse Feuillant
James Tissot's portraits of stylish Victorian women are not simply about fashion; they also reveal his subjects' humanity. This painting of a French aristocrat's wife is rather surprising, because she is not depicted in a formal evening gown, as would have been the norm for a woman of her stature.