European

The AMAM’s rich collection of European art comprises paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, manuscript illumination, tapestries, decorative arts, and material culture made across the European continent between approximately 900 and 1900.

Highlights of the 15th and 16th centuries include a rare plaster relief of the Virgin and Child by Andrea del Verrocchio, a panel painting of the Fountain of Life that offers fascinating insight into Jewish-Christian relations in medieval Spain, a masterful drawing of the Lamentation of Christ at the Tomb by Filippino Lippi with small pinprick holes used to transfer the design to panel, and a touching portrait of two young siblings by Sofonisba Anguissola.

Seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painting is a major strength of the collection, with Hendrick ter Brugghen’s stunning St. Sebastian Tended by Irene, a late painting by Peter Paul Rubens depicting the unusual subject of the Finding of Erichthonius, and a sumptuous self-portrait by the itinerant artist Michiel Sweerts. Additional highlights from the 17th century include an elaborate portable altar by Jacopo Ligozzi and a painted cross signed by María Josefa Sánchez.

In the 18th century, Pompeo Batoni’s Portrait of John Wodehouse illustrates the growing interest in travel to Italy and the study of ancient cultures among British elites, while William Hogarth’s painting of architect Theodore Jacobsen offers a model of portraiture focused on the sitter’s profession. The AMAM’s holdings of 18th-century French art are particularly strong and include a striking grisaille oil sketch by François Boucher, as well as paintings and drawings by Antoine Coypel, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

The 19th-century collection features pendant portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence of Eleanor and Robert Wigram, whose biographies illuminate global stories of travel and trade, an atmospheric view of Venice by J.M.W. Turner, and an early painting by Claude Monet depicting a Parisian garden seen from the windows of the Louvre.