Jan van Goyen

The Wallraf-Richartz-Museum is one of the three major museums in Cologne, Germany. It houses an art gallery with a collection of fine art from the medieval period to the early twentieth century. Part of its collection was used for the establishment of Museum Ludwig in 1976. The Madonna in the Rose... Bower, shown at right, is among the Gothic paintings in the collection of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum. It was created by Stefan Lochner, who lived between 1410 and 1451 in Germany, mainly working in Cologne. He is considered a late Gothic painter. His work usually has a clean appearance, combining the Gothic attention toward long flowing lines with brilliant colors and a Flemish influence of realism and attention to detail. This painting is considered typical of his style. It was executed about 1450 and shows the Virgin and Child reposing in a blooming rose arbor that is attended by Lochner's characteristic, child angels. Jacob van Utrecht is the painter of the altarpiece for the Great Saint Martin Church in Cologne, dated 1515, which is now in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum. This painter is also known by another signature, "Jacobus Traicetensis".
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The Valkhof museum is an archaeology and art museum in Nijmegen, Netherlands. The museum has existed since 1999, created as a merger between the G.M. Kam museum of archaeology and the Commanderie van St. Jan museum of classical and modern art. The museum's collection includes a large and important... collection of local Roman archaeological finds and art . The Museum stands on the edge of the Valkhof park, site of a Roman army camp and a citadel built by Charlemagne. The museum's building was designed by Dutch architect Ben van Berkel and was opened on 14 September 1999 by Queen Beatrix. In November 2008, the official name of the museum was changed to Valkhof-Kam. This reflected an agreement reached with the heirs of G.M. Kam.
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The Baroque is a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, dance, and music. The style started around 1600 in Rome, Italy and spread to most of... Europe. The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent, in response to the Protestant Reformation, that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement. The aristocracy also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art as a means of impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control. Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word baroque is derived from the Portuguese word "barroco", Spanish "barroco", or French "baroque", all of which refer to a "rough or imperfect pearl", though whether it entered those languages via Latin, Arabic, or some other source is uncertain.
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