A solo dancer stands alone on a raked stage, caught in stage light. Edgar Degas made this pastel over an ink monotype around 1876 to 1878, and the layered process is part of how the picture works. Wikimedia Commons files the sheet under portraits of Rosita Mauri, a dancer, while also categorising it among Degas's pastels of ballet dancers and among his pastel-over-monotype works dated 1876. This docent tour explains what the sheet is, how its making shapes the image, and where the evidence stops.
A quiet domestic interior by Johannes Vermeer, painted around 1664, in which a woman stands at a table holding a small balance at equilibrium, while a painting of the Last Judgment hangs behind her. This short tour looks at how the picture's composition, light and objects support a reading of inner balance and conscience.
A docent-led reading of Pieter Brueghel the Elder's Tower of Babel in Vienna, following the unfinished tower, King Nimrod's retinue, and the stonemasons at work. The account distinguishes what is visible from what the supplied source documents, and leaves unsupported interpretation aside.
A gallery guide's reading of Thomas Eakins's 1875 group portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross, pausing over a surgical demonstration in a Philadelphia amphitheater. The guide connects the painting's subject and setting to the composition, light and gesture that carry its meaning, while noting where the available record leaves questions open.
A reclining nude woman sleeps in an open landscape, named as Venus though she carries none of the goddess's usual attributes. This gallery visit uses the surviving evidence to explain the subject, the pictorial choices that shape it, and the argument that this may be the first nude painted simply as a nude.
A riverside balcony at the Maison Fournaise, a table of wine and fruit, and a circle of Renoir's friends: this guide reads the painting's subject, its tightly composed blend of portraiture, still life and landscape, and the questions its identified cast still raises.
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