art | Europeana Blog

A journey through Byzantine Ravenna

Ravenna in modern Italy was one of Europe’s most important cities in the Byzantine era. Today, experts from the Byzantine Art and Archaeology project take us on a tour of Ravenna’s remarkable Byzantine heritage.

black and white photograph of tables and chairs inside a cafe

Beautiful & useful: Bauhaus and Walter Gropius

2019 celebrates the centenary of the influential Bauhaus art and design school, founded by architect Walter Gropius in Weimar Germany on April 12th in 1919.

From earth goddess festival to family feast: the roots and guises of ‘Mother’s Day’

Throughout the world, the love, patience, dedication and commitment of mothers are honoured yearly on ‘Mother’s Day’. Many countries and cultures celebrate their mothers in the month of May, and treat the ‘leading lady’ of the family to a day of pampering, presents, festive food and extra doses of hugs. But did you know that […]

From Russia with love: Misia Sert, queen of Paris

Misia Sert was one of the most intriguing and influential women in Belle Époque Paris, a muse and confidant to many of the iconic artists and composers of the time.

Queen of Arts: Christina of Sweden’s Roman reign

Anyone who wanted to see the musical avant-garde at work around 1600 went south of the Alps. With figureheads such as Monteverdi, Peri and Caccini and their work in the new opera genre, Italy pioneered an innovative repertoire and ‘modern’ styles and became the mecca for musicians in the early days of the baroque era. […]

A life devoted to art – Olga Boznańska

Olga Boznańska was a notable Polish painter of the turn of the 20th century. In a special guest post, curator Dr Piotr Kopszak of Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie explores her life and work.

Carving a place for women on statues

If you were to count the statues in your local town, village or city, how many would you find that represent women? Despite women making up more than half of the population of Europe, most of the statues you come across commemorate the lives of men.

#ColorOurCollections – our new colouring book about women in history

It’s this week again when all you need is coloured pencils, crayons and some great openly licensed images to colour in. #ColorOurCollections is back! This year, we prepared a colouring book about women in history. From the first medieval depiction of a female dentist to suffrage posters – there’s a lot to colour and to […]

A Tradition of Mourners – Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy

In a special guest post to celebrate the Cleveland Museum of Art’s (CMA) new Open Access initiative, Curatorial Assistant in Medieval Art Amanda Mikolic illuminates the tomb sculpture of the Burgundian court, illustrated by openly licensed images from CMA and European institutions.

Three Saints and the Art of Anamorphosis

Ross MacFarlane is a Research Development Specialist at London’s Wellcome Collection, a free museum and library exploring health, life and our place in the world. In this guest post, Ross explores the phenomenon of anamorphic art through an unusual religious painting depicting not one, not two, but three saints.

Detail of a miniature a mermaid with a mirror and comb, from the lower margin of the folio.

Mixed-up mermaids

The Deutsches Historiches Museum #DHMMeer in Berlin is running a Europe and the sea blog parade from 20-25 July 2018, asking people to share posts on the theme ‘What does the sea mean to me?’ To me, one of the things it means is mermaids. So I revisited a post I wrote a while ago on […]

World Cup of Art

Welcome to the World Cup of Art! The matches are between the artworks related to countries playing in the FIFA World Cup, available on Europeana. And you can influence the score by voting for the artworks you like! The rest is the same as in football: exciting, diverse and unexpected. All participating artworks: […]

Announcing our latest online exhibition Visions of War

We are delighted to announce the launch of our new Europeana 1914-1918 exhibition: Visions of War. Using archive material from Europeana 1914-1918 and artworks held in museum collections, Visions of War examines how serving soldiers and official war artists depicted conflict on the Western Front. The exhibition features personal artefacts and stories which people have contributed […]

5 Europeana Art highlights from 2017

As the year draws to a close, we look back on the past twelve months and celebrate five significant moments for Europeana Art. In chronological order: 1. Art Nouveau season 2017 began with fireworks: a four-month season dedicated to Art Nouveau. Its centrepiece was the exhibition Art Nouveau – A Universal Style which surveyed Art Nouveau across Europe […]

The Mauritshuis arrives in Europeana

Today we welcome the wonderful collections of the Mauritshuis into Europeana, published in high-resolution and released freely into the public domain for the first time. Portrait of a Woman from Southern Germany, 1520-25. Formerly attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger. Mauritshuis. Public Domain The Mauritshuis is famous for its unique collection of paintings by Dutch and […]

Art Up Your Tab now available for Firefox

In April, we announced that Art Up Your Tab was available as an extension for the Chrome internet browser. Now, we’re pleased to say it’s also available for Firefox users. The plug-in displays a full-screen painting or photograph from a frequently refreshed pool of carefully selected images from Europeana for each newly opened tab or window. The […]