Masterworks

"This picture by Arshile Gorky was painted in America in 1944. At that time, American artists were beginning to play an important role in the international avant-garde scene. Gorky counts as an American artist: he had been educated in America in the 1920s and he continued to live and work there until his death in 1947...''

"The American artist Franz Kline made this large painting in 1958 and called it 'C & O.' As with much abstract art, the title is there partly to warn us not to think about what the painting shows, but instead to think - and feel what the painting is. Compared with figurative art, such as a conventional landscape, paintings like this one can look empty..."

'Beta Kappa' is one of more than 600 paintings produced by the American artist Morris Louis in Washington between the years 1954 to 1962 - the last eight years of his life. These works are completely different from his works that came before. When he had found what he needed, Morris Louis was able to move on and produce pictures like this one, for which he is best remembered...

'Mountains and Sea' was painted by the American artist Helen Frankenthaler in 1952. The picture caused a sensation among the New York artists of Frankenthaler's circle when it was first exhibited. But it also influenced a whole generation of American artists - the so-called colour field painters, such as Kenneth Nolan or Morris Louis.

Portraits with a profile view of the subject actually belong to the early history of portrait painting. They have the heraldic quality of old portrayals on coins and certainly offer us a characteristic view, but one that is nevertheless unusual. For you seldom greet a person from the side, an encounter is always a movement towards one another: people prefer eye contact...

This portrait is of Ginevra de' Benci who was born in 1457 as the daughter of a wealthy Florentine businessman, Amerigo de' Benci. Leonardo da Vinci painted her in 1474, when Ginevra was only sixteen. She married Luigi Niccolini that same year. He came from a highly respectable family and was the 'Gonfalonier' of Florence (a form of mayor) at the time...

This portrait of a young unknown woman by Rogier van der Weyden, painted around 1455, is both restrained and relaxed, simple yet elegant. The refined pallor of the face and very similar, slightly greyish shades of the cap and the thin cloth laid around her neck stand out brightly against predominantly dark, almost black surroundings...

This is a portrait of the banker and friend of the arts Bindo Altoviti, who was born in Florence and lived in Rome. When the picture was painted in 1515 Altoviti was only 25 years old and the artist Raphael was not much older. He portrays his subject in a bold light, abandoning the usual Renaissance style of portraiture...

Albrecht Dürer did not see or portray a brilliant intelligence in this face, nor is there a heavily muscled, heroic physicality in what he shows us of the body. But what he saw and what interested him, was a character, a self-conscious rectitude, a resolute persistence, as well as an original mind.