© Ashmolean Museum
Death and the Girl (maiden)
Alphonse Legros
- Art Funded
- 1947
- Presented by
- J G Legge through The Art Fund
Part of a collection of 7 works presented to the Ashmolean Museum by a resident of Oxford.
© Ashmolean Museum
Nominally inspired by Lucretius' De rerum natura, Piero di Cosimo's The Forest Fire takes its scientific subject and embellishes it with fantastical creatures from the artist's imagination: Bulls, bears, lions and deer-like creatures with human faces all flee wearily from a fire.
Rubens' portrait of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel dates from about 1629. The Earl was a great collector, and Rubens had painted the earl's wife a few years earlier on a visit to Antwerp. This drawing in pen and ink with a chalk base is unusually informal, reflecting perhaps the comfortable relationship between artist and patron.
