About the European Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings Collection

The Cincinnati Art Museum houses a world-class collection of European paintings that offers a broad survey from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. It includes Renaissance paintings by Mantegna, Titian, Cranach and Memling, and Baroque works by Guercino, Rubens and van Dyck. Eighteenth-century British painting is a particular strength, with works by Hogarth, Gainsborough and Reynolds, as is nineteenth-century French landscape painting, including examples by Corot, Courbet and Monet. Modernist movements are well represented with paintings by Derain, Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse and Miró. Rarities include 12th-century frescos, two multi-panel altarpieces, and a major collection of portrait miniatures. 

European sculpture spans medieval to modern times, including works by Giambologna, Clodion and Marini. The drawings collection, particularly strong in nineteenth-century works, includes watercolors by Turner and Cézanne, pastels by Degas and Renoir, and over a thousand sheets by Düsseldorf school artists. 

The museum actively collects in these areas by gift and purchase, with a particular focus on artists and subjects underrepresented in the traditional canon of historical European art. 

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About the Curator

Dr. Peter Jonathan Bell, Curator of European Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings, holds degrees from Oberlin College and the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, and earned a PhD in Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. A specialist in the field of Italian sculpture, he has lectured and published in North America and Europe on Renaissance and Baroque art and is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome.  

Additional Digital Resources

The French Sculpture Census
A project by Laure de Margerie, funded by the University of Texas at Dallas, the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Institut national d’histoire de l’art, the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée Rodin, and the Ecole du Louvre.

The William Blake Archive
A hypermedia archive sponsored by the Library of Congress and supported by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Rochester, and the Scholarly Editions and Translations Division of the National Endowment for the Humanities. With past support from the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia, the Getty Grant Program, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Preservation and Access Division of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Sun Microsystems, and Inso Corporation.