Top 5 Artworks Downloaded via CMA's API
Check out the top artworks in our collection that have been downloaded using CMA's Open Access API.
ArtLens Exhibition: Wade Cup (2019-07-19) by The Cleveland Museum of ArtThe Cleveland Museum of Art
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Hell Courtesan (1871–89) by Kawanabe Kyōsai (Japanese, 1831-1889)The Cleveland Museum of Art
5. Hell Courtesan (1871–89)
Kawanabe Kyōsai (Japanese, 1831-1889) repeated this large-scale composition with variations a number of times. In this version, a famous 15th-century courtesan known for wearing a robe with images of the Buddhist hells stands before a folding screen.
Legend has it that she was abducted by bandits, and wore the garment to symbolize her belief that her suffering in her current life was punishment for sins committed in a former life.
Here, in a parody depiction of the garment, the courtesan stands in for Benzaiten, the goddess of everything that flows, while the remaining members of the Seven Gods of Good Fortune appear on her outer robe.
One of them reports sins to Enma, the King of Hell, who is writing out his judgments on the recently deceased.
Elegant Pleasures of the Four Seasons (c. 1782) by Kitagawa Utamaro (Japanese, 1753-1806)The Cleveland Museum of Art
4. Elegant Pleasures of the Four Seasons (c. 1782)
Attributed to Kitagawa Utamaro (Japanese, 1753-1806), the title of this print suggests a series of four, but only this wintry print is known. A boy has dropped his toy wrestlers as he is hoisted up to a woman who has been enjoying a book at the heated table.
Her companion buries her head beneath the blanket to stay warm, her bare feet exposed by a girl tending the hot coals in the pit in the floor.
Design for a Monstrance (1600s) by AnonymousThe Cleveland Museum of Art
3. Design for a Monstrance (1600s)
Made in Italy, this design uses pen and brown ink (ruled in places) and brush and brown wash, with graphite, traces of brush and gray and pink wash, and stylus; framing lines in graphite.
The Large Plane Trees (Road Menders at Saint-Rémy) (1889) by Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890)The Cleveland Museum of Art
2. The Large Plane Trees (Road Menders at Saint-Rémy) (1889)
In 1889, after suffering a severe hallucinatory seizure, Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890) committed himself to an asylum near Saint-Rémy. While walking through the town that fall, he was impressed by the sight of men repairing a road beneath immense plane trees.
Rushing to capture the yellowing leaves, he painted this composition on an unusual cloth with a pattern of small red diamonds, visible in the picture’s many unpainted areas.
“In spite of the cold,” he wrote to his brother, “I have gone on working outside till now, and I think it is doing me good and the work too.”
After painting this composition directly from nature, Van Gogh used it to produce a second version in the studio known as The Road Menders at Saint-Rémy.
Painted on a traditional canvas covered by a ground layer, the second version is more restrained, the explosive yellows balanced by larger areas of cool color.
Water Lilies (Agapanthus) (c. 1915–26) by Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)The Cleveland Museum of Art
1. Water Lilies (Agapanthus) (c. 1915–26)
Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926) spent the last thirty years of his life painting the lily pond at his home in Giverny, a small town on the river Seine, just north of Paris.
While his initial exploration of the water lily theme (1902-8) produced smaller works more descriptive of a garden setting, the later paintings focus on the water's shimmering surface, indicating the surrounding trees and lush bank only through reflections.
Here reflection and reality merge in strokes of blue, violet, and green. Fronds of water plants sway underwater and passing clouds are reflected above.
By 1915 Monet had conceived a plan, called his Grande Décoration, for arranging a series of monumental water lily paintings in an oval room, thus creating a continuous panorama that would surround and enclose the viewer in an environment of pure color.
