Massacre of the Innocents

In art

The theme of the "Massacre of the Innocents" has provided artists with opportunities to compose complicated depictions of massed bodies in violent action. Artists of the Renaissance took inspiration for their "Massacres" from Roman reliefs of the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs to the extent that they showed the figures heroically nude http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o448.html. Guido Reni's early (1611) Massacre of the Innocents, in an unusual vertical format, is at Bologna http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/r/reni/1/innocent.html.

Related Topics:
Lapith - Centaur - Guido Reni

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Peter Paul Rubens painted the theme more than once. One version, now in Munich, was engraved and reproduced as a painting as far away as colonial Peru http://www.spanishcolonial.com/Innocents.html. Another, his hectic Massacre of the Innocents is one of the most valuable paintings in the world, after being purchased by Kenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet for £49.5 million GBP (then equal to some $76.7 million USD) at a 2002 Sotheby's auction http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/2119451.stm (see List of most expensive paintings).

Related Topics:
Peter Paul Rubens - Kenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet - GBP - USD - Sotheby's - List of most expensive paintings

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