Jeune Femme lisant, by Victor Gabriel Gilbert

Feeding the Pigeons, 1877, by Eugen Von Blaas

Working with Lord Hamilton, this was the greatest illustrated book produced in Germany at the time. This print was used as the fifth plate in the first part, which was devoted to the Iliad. The second part was related to the Odyssey, and the four following parts alternated between Homer's two epics until the project petered out in 1805. It was revived in 1821 but even then only three more parts appeared, leaving many plates unused.

The heads shown are, from left to right: Menelaus, Paris, Diomedes, Ulysses, Nestor, Achilles and Agamemnon. Heyne's text for this plate runs to eleven pages, and gives the source of each image. It begins: "This group is one of Tischbein's most splendid pages. The heads are taken individually from the finest antiques, but he devised the arrangement himself so as to make each head more remarkable and distinct by the juxtaposition of one with the other. The characters of these ideal heroes are, along with their nobility and size, expressed in the clearest and most particular way."

The tale of Alexander and Apelles, a favorite of Renaissance and Baroque painters, celebrates the power and nobility of painting. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo painted this episode at least three times. For this, the third rendering, he adopted a classicizing style in which antique architectural elements and relief sculptures evoke a sumptuous palace setting. The background provides a focal area for the gaze of Alexander the Great, who appears handsome and self-confident, yet unaware of the charged glances shared by Apelles and Campaspe.

Though the painting’s early history is unrecorded, the title by which it has become known, ‘The Pedroso Murillo’, is connected to the Pedroso family. The altarpiece is recorded in their collection for over a century (in 1708 in Cádiz and later in Madrid). It is among Murillo’s last works and clearly showcases the loose and confident brushwork of his late style. It was probably made in 1681–2 when the artist was working on a series of paintings for the Capuchin church in Cádiz. He supposedly fell from scaffolding while painting there and died from his injuries several months later.

It was still in the Pedroso family collection early in the 19th century and was acquired in Seville by James Campbell for the British art dealer William Buchanan; it arrived in Britain in January 1810. It was then acquired by Thomas Bulkeley Bulkeley-Owen, before being bought by its present owner.

A Calm at a Mediterranean Port, 1770, by Claude-Joseph Vernet

In brilliant detail, Claude-Joseph Vernet captured the gorgeous weather and leisurely activities of a day by the sea. Fishermen clean the day's catch on a stone pier while several people chat nearby, one of them pointing toward the large ship in the bay. Meanwhile, a man sits and smokes his pipe, the tobacco glowing a bright red. A cumulus cloud, perhaps the remnant of a distant storm, towers to the left of the setting sun. Warm tones of yellow, orange, and red predominate, suggesting a hazy sunset after a bright day.

In A Calm, Vernet portrayed a completely peaceful scene in striking contrast to its pendant, A Storm on a Mediterranean Coast. Taken together, the two works show, on the one hand, nature's benevolence, and on the other, nature's fury.

A Storm on a Mediterranean Coast, 1767, by Claude-Joseph Vernet, Getty Museum

Claude-Joseph Vernet depicted a storm's aftermath: dark clouds above an angry sea, a shipwrecked boat and its anxious survivors, and listing ships in the distance. As the sea furiously beats against the shoreline, waves explode beyond the rocks in a froth of white. The motion of the waves, the distant rain shaft, the battered ship, and even the bodies of the fleeing castaways fill the scene with strong, opposing diagonal lines. The lighthouse standing solidly upright at the painting's center counters all of this activity.

The strong colors of the shipwrecked survivors' clothing stand out against the palette of greens, grays, and browns in the turbulent sea. Clearing skies cast the survivors in an eerie glow; dark tones at the left and lower edges and in the waves themselves draw further attention to the bright figures.

German Nationalism from the 19th century, among many other things, celebrated Arminius, the leader of Germanic tribes who defeated the Roman army at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. The battle, recorded in detail by Roman historians Tacitus (c 56-120 CE) and Cassius Dio (155-235 CE), became forgotten in time, and interest in it was not revived until the Renaissance. Amazingly, the site of the battle was only rediscovered in 1987, and excavated from 1989.

Its hero Arminius has been painted occasionally, especially in the German nationalist context. Johannes Gehrts preferred to elaborate the new myth, in his Armin Bids Goodbye to Thusnelda. This is presumably intended to show Arminius leaving the princess on his way to the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE, five years before he abducted her. The couple are shown with the blonde hair and fair complexions claimed to be characteristic of Germanic peoples, and could easily have stepped out of a Wagner opera.

A zigzagging motion leads up through the lower half of the picture to the painting held in the artist’s hands. Only the back of the painting is shown directly, with the front seen only in the mirror. This alludes to the era’s view of art as a mirror held up to life.

Wilhelm Bendz was keenly interested in the new role emerging for artists in the early 19th century; they were no longer regarded as specialist craftsmen, but as intellectual workers, as artists in the modern sense. In the 1820s, he painted a number of pictures of artists at work. The artist in this picture is Bendz’s fellow student Ditlev Blunck engaged in painting a portrait of Jørgen Sonne, a painter of battle scenes.