3.4 Purpose and Audience in Early European and Colonial American Art

Virgin (Theotokos) and Child between Saints Theodore and George (Early Byzantine Europe; sixth or early seventh century CE; encaustic on wood). An icon is a holy image used in prayer; believers felt it connected them to the holy person shown. Encaustic is paint mixed with hot wax. Mary, the Theotokos (God-bearer), holds Christ, flanked by two soldier saints who stare straight ahead, while angels behind look up toward the hand of God. It survived at the remote Monastery of Saint Catherine at Sinai, when many icons elsewhere were destroyed during iconoclasm, a period when religious images were banned.

Church of Sainte-Foy (Conques, France; Romanesque Europe; church c. 1050–1130; reliquary ninth century with later additions; stone; stone and paint; gold, silver, gemstones and enamel over wood). A reliquary is a container for a relic, a holy person's remains. Saint Foy's relics drew pilgrims on the road to Santiago de Compostela. The church has thick walls and barrel vaults, plus an ambulatory (a walkway around the apse) so crowds could visit chapels. The tympanum over the door shows the Last Judgment, warning visitors. The golden reliquary holds part of her skull.

Röttgen Pietà (Late medieval Europe; c. 1300–1325; painted wood). A pietà shows Mary holding Christ's dead body. This German version exaggerates suffering: Christ's body is stiff and thin, with large clusters of blood at the wounds. It was a devotional image meant to make viewers feel Mary's grief.

Isenheim altarpiece (Matthias Grünewald; c. 1512–1516; oil on wood). An altarpiece is a painted or carved work behind an altar; this one has hinged wings opened for different occasions. It was made for a monastery hospital that treated ergotism, a disease causing painful skin sores and gangrene. On the closed panels, the crucified Christ's skin is covered in sores, so patients could see Christ suffering as they did.

Bibles moralisées: Dedication Page with Blanche of Castile and King Louis IX, and Scenes from the Apocalypse (Gothic Europe; c. 1225–1245; ink, tempera and gold leaf on vellum; two images, each from a separate manuscript). A moralized Bible pairs Bible scenes with moral lessons in roundels arranged like stained-glass medallions. On the dedication page, the queen mother Blanche and the young king Louis IX sit above a cleric and a scribe at work. Books like this taught a young king how to rule as a Christian. The CED corrected these two captions in 2026, so match each image to its manuscript by what it shows.

Last Supper (Leonardo da Vinci; c. 1494–1498; oil and tempera). Painted on the wall of a monastery dining hall in Milan, so the monks ate below Christ's table. Leonardo shows the moment Christ says one of the apostles will betray him; they react in groups of three. The perspective lines meet at Christ's head, framed by a window. He experimented with oil and tempera on a dry wall, and the paint began flaking within decades.

Henri IV Receives the Portrait of Marie de' Medici (Peter Paul Rubens; 1621–1625; oil on canvas). One of a cycle of paintings Marie, the queen mother of France, ordered to glorify her life. Henri IV falls for her portrait, held by Cupid and Hymen (the god of marriage), while Jupiter and Juno approve from the clouds. Allegory, using gods and personifications to stand for ideas, turned a political marriage into destiny.

The Palace at Versailles (Versailles, France; Louis Le Vau and Jules Hardouin-Mansart; begun 1669; masonry, stone, wood, iron and gold leaf; marble and bronze; gardens). Louis XIV, the Sun King, turned a hunting lodge into the seat of government and kept nobles at court where he could watch them. The Hall of Mirrors and vast geometric gardens show a king who controls nature and the nation.

The Virgin of Guadalupe (Miguel González; c. 1698; oil on canvas on wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl). This copies a miraculous image believed to have appeared to Juan Diego, an Indigenous man, in 1531. Corner scenes tell the story. Guadalupe became a symbol of Mexican identity.

Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo (attributed to Juan Rodríguez Juárez; c. 1715; oil on canvas). A casta painting is one of a series showing families of mixed ancestry, each labeled with a category. They present a colonial social ranking based on ancestry, with Spaniards at the top, often for European viewers.

The Tête à Tête, from Marriage à la Mode (William Hogarth; c. 1743; oil on canvas). The second of six satirical paintings about an arranged marriage between a broke aristocrat's son and a rich merchant's daughter. Clues show their bad habits: a broken sword, a woman's cap in his pocket, a steward with unpaid bills. Hogarth sold engravings to a broad middle-class audience.