Images

Scythian belt buckle, Southern Siberia, 3rd century BCE. Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

Celtic belt buckle, 5th century BCE. Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier, Germany.

An 1886 oil on canvas, Girl Arranging Her Hair, by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), the American impressionist painter. White often interested the impressionists as to capture the play of light upon an absence of colour was a real challenge. Here...

A map illustrating the journey home of the Achaean warrior-king Odysseus after the Trojan war. His travel from Troy to Ithaca (and his wife Penelope) took innumerable twists and turns and lasted ten years. Ever since Homer's Odyssey was written...

An 1893-4 oil on canvas, The Boating Party, by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), the American impressionist painter. Cassatt here takes her frequent mother and child subject and inserts it into a boating scene. (National Gallery of Art, Washington...

An 1882 oil on canvas, Two Women in a Loge, by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), the American impressionist painter. The two young girls here at the opera are connected by the large painted fan, a fashionable addition to a lady's attire in this period...

A c. 1890-1 aquatint, Woman Arranging Her Hair, by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), the American impressionist painter. (National Library of France, Paris)

An 1890-1 coloured etching, The Letter, by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), the American impressionist painter. The areas of flat colour, distinct outlines, and playful perspective all show the influence of Japanese prints on the artist. (National...

A c. 1886 oil on canvas, The Family, by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), the American impressionist painter. The subject of mother and child was one Cassatt returned to again and again, often, as here, with a distinct Madonna-esque pose combined...

An 1878 oil on canvas, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), the American impressionist painter. The art historian J. H. Rubin notes: "The sense of casual observation and intimacy, combined with a wilful use of blue...