Smart Secrets of Great Paintings

16th century Antwerp was like 1950s New York. The city of craftsmen and fishermen at the entrance to the North Sea became a leading finance hub, facilitated by European exploration...

Paris shone brightly in the second half of the 19th century, with its fashionable restaurants, and its cabarets and theatres, which provided the spectacle of a carefree society. Th...

At the end of the 19th century, Asnieres resembled a seaside resort. The cheering crowd that came to attend the regattas animated the banks of the Seine, and the rowing club was al...

In the mid-17th century, Madrid experienced its Golden Age. The Royal Alcazar of Madrid, a legacy of the Muslim sovereignty that had dominated the region for a long time, became th...

In "The Wedding at Cana", Paolo Veronese transposes the biblical tale of Christ's first miracle to the scene of a sumptuous Venetian banquet. This documentary explores the histori...

With a tiny and delicate paintbrush, Jean Fouquet adds the golden threads of a tentative humanism to "The Martyrdom of Saint Apollonia" (circa 1450) and unveils a glimmer of the mo...

"A Lady in Her Bath" (circa 1571), by Francois Clouet, bears witness to a period in which the pleasure of the senses and the spirit were caught up in religious conflict. It gave ri...

As the French Revolution approached, Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun painted the queen's portrait in an attempt to win back public opinion. This documentary examines the historical...

As the war of colonization raged in Algeria, Eugene Delacroix was the first French artist to cross the Mediterranean. The naturalism of "Women of Algiers in Their Apartment," paint...

The roots of "Colourful Life" (1907), just like those of Vassily Kandinsky himself, were firmly anchored in age-old Russian soil. And yet the painting contains all the elements tha...