Images

The meeting of the Assembly of Notables of 1787 in Versailles, engraving by Claude Niquet, late 18th century. National Archives, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, France.

Title page of Defending Clerical Marriage (1524), an open letter by reformer and theologian Katharina Zell (nee Schütz, l. 1497-1562).

Home of Matthäus and Katharina Zell, illustration by Henri Armand-Delille, 1902. National University Library of Strasbourg.

An 1873 oil on canvas painting, The Cotton Market, New Orleans (aka The Cotton Office), by Edgar Degas (1834-1917), the French impressionist painter. The scene shows a busy office with 13 people, including buyers...

An 1874 oil on canvas painting, The Dance Class, by Edgar Degas (1834-1917), the French impressionist painter. The expert conducting the class, probably an examination in the Paris Opera, is Jules Perrot (1810-1892). The...

A c. 1876 oil on canvas painting, Absinthe (aka In the Café), by Edgar Degas (1834-1917), the French impressionist painter. Here is a depiction of the impoverished and alienated lives of the capital's poor. Degas used two models...

A c. 1876 pastel on paper, The Star (l'étoile), by Edgar Degas (1834-1917), the French impressionist painter. The artist painted many scenes of ballerinas, but most, like this one, are not of the dancers performing but either...

Saints Augustine and Monica, oil on canvas painting by Ary Scheffer, 1854. National Gallery, London.

A c. 1868 oil on canvas painting, Interior, by Edgar Degas (1834-1917), the French impressionist painter. Degas left the relationship between the man and woman in this scene deliberately obscure and would not explain it to friends...

Saint Augustine Ordained a Bishop, detail from a Netherlandish triptych painted c. 1490. Cloisters Museum, New York.