MFA Highlights: European Painting and Sculpture before 1800

Major works spanning the medieval era to the Enlightenment from the MFA Boston’s superlative collection

The tremendous political, religious and cultural changes that swept across Europe in the years from 1000 to 1800 fundamentally transformed the practices and purposes of painting and sculpture—from elaborately carved and gilded medieval Christian altars to Renaissance self-portraits touting the skill of the artist to 18th-century portraits in marble of the era’s leading thinkers. The 100 highlights from the impressive European art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, gathered here offer an accessible introduction to the story of art from the medieval period to the Enlightenment. Modern notions of art and artists, the art market, as well as the births of art history and the art museum as an institution, all trace their origins to Europe in these centuries, which produced work of fascinating variety and enduring beauty.

Artists include: Rembrandt, Rosso Fiorentino, Titian, Fragonard, Donatello, Fra Angelico, Rogier van der Weyden, Peter Paul Rubens, El Greco, Velázquez and Poussin.