Fogg Museum

The Apotheosis of Aeneas, c. 1765, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum. More

François Boucher's portrait of Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764), the officially recognized mistress of the French king Louis XV from 1745 to 1750, was intended for personal use rather than public display. For the modern viewer it presents intriguing questions of identity, subject matter, and manufacture. Originally painted in 1750 as a small rectangular bust portrait, it was damaged in transit and was later extended and reworked on all four sides, most likely by Boucher himself. The looking glass was an addition, and Boucher painted over its elaborate silver frame with this green lacquered wooden one after the French surrendered their silver to support the war against Britain in 1760. The portrait of her sovereign and lover on Madame de Pompadour's wrist was derived from a print she commissioned after an onyx cameo. The signature and date (1758) are early 20th-century additions.

The Boucher portrait is just one notable example from the wide-ranging collection of the Department of Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts, which emphasizes works made in Europe up to around 1900. The collection is especially recognized for its paintings, with particular strengths in early-Renaissance Italian, 17th-century Dutch, and the 19th century. Master artists in the collection whose works have become icons of Western art include Fra Angelico, Paul Cézanne, J.-A.-D. Ingres, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Nicolas Poussin, Rembrandt van Rijn, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Peter Paul Rubens, and Vincent van Gogh.

The department also has a strong collection of medieval French and Spanish sculpture and is home to the largest collection of terracotta studies by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the world. French 19th-century sculpture includes bronze renderings of animals by Antoine-Louis Barye and an exceptionally fine group of sculptures by Auguste Rodin.

The department's holdings of decorative arts include silver from the British Isles and a celebrated group of ceramics designed by Josiah Wedgwood, including the first example of his world-renowned Portland Vase to enter an American collection. In addition, the department is responsible for the Maurice Wertheim Collection of impressionist and postimpressionist art, and a select group of works from Africa, Central America, and Australia.

Department of Paintings, Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Stephan Wolohojian, Landon and Lavinia Clay Curator
Sarah Kianovsky, assistant curator
Anna Knaap, Theodore Rousseau Postdoctoral Fellow
Tara Cerretani, staff assistant