The Stories behind famous paintings

Art is often meant to be “read” through critical deconstruction. The symbolic language of a given work of art—can be sophisticated and complex, reflecting the collective consciousness or drawn from the artist’s personal experience. The stories told by works of art—and about them—are, quite literally, the stuff of novels. Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” inspired the novel of the same name by author Tracy Chevalier. The book was subsequently turned into a film starring Scarlett Johansson.

Stacker curated this list of some of the world’s most famous images and the fascinating stories behind them.

Christina’s World

- Artist: Andrew Wyeth - Year: 1948/ 50Mart

in Beek // Flickr

“Christina’s World” continues to fascinate more than 70 years after it was first painted. The faceless woman lying on the ground was Anna Christina Olson, the neighbor and muse of Pennsylvania artist Andrew Wyeth. While the painting has all the hallmarks of a pastoral, Olson’s pose is not one of romantic languor; she suffered from a muscle-wasting disorder, possibly Charcot-Marie Tooth disease, and was known to drag herself across the family homestead.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Arnolfini Portrait

- Artist: Jan van Eyck - Year: 1434

Painted by Dutch master Jan van Eyck, this early Netherlandish panel painting is shrouded in symbolism. The elegantly dressed couple are thought to be Giovanni di Nicolao di Arnolfini, and his wife, Costanza Trenta, wealthy Italians living in Bruges. The unusual composition begs several questions. Does the painting celebrate the couple’s wedding, or commemorate some other event, such as a shrewdly negotiated marriage contract? Was the bride pregnant, or simply dressed in the latest fashion? And what are the mysterious figures depicted in the convex mirror? The unorthodox placement of van Eyck’s signature directly above it suggests one of the men may be the artist himself.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

American Gothic

- Artist: Grant Wood - Year: 1930

Grant Wood spent years searching for inspiration in Europe. The work that would make him famous, however, was painted after his return to the heartland. A national icon and leading exponent of regionalism, “American Gothic” depicts what appears to be a Depression-era farmer and his weathered wife. Grant intended the couple to represent father and daughter; in reality, they were neither. The man holding the pitchfork was Wood’s dentist, Byron McKeeby, flanked by the artist’s sister, Nan Wood Graham.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Cyclops

- Artist: Odilon Redon - Year: 1914

For those not familiar with the finer points of Greek mythology, the dream-like subject of Odilon Redon’s “Cyclops” may not be easily identifiable. Polyphemus, the giant that is sporting the solitary eyeball, peers over a rocky outcropping at the object of his desire—the nymph Galatea. Derived from Homer’s “Odyssey,” the tale was a popular trope among French symbolists, including Redon’s contemporary, poet and painter Gustave Moreau.

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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

Death of Marat

- Artist: Jacques-Louis David - Year: 1793

The pallid figure bleeding out in Jaques-Louis David’s 1793 neoclassical masterpiece is none other than Jean-Paul Marat, the French revolutionary famously stabbed to death in the bath by political adversary Charlotte Corday. David gravitated toward radical politics, aligning himself with the Jacobin ideologies of Marat and Maximilien Robespierre. In post-revolutionary France, he rose to the position of court painter under Napoleon Bonaparte.

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MatthiasKabel // WikimediaCommons

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