On the first floor and much of the second floor it looks like somebody repainted the same picture four-hundred times. Why is that?
Well in some ways they did. The common religious themes were painted over and over. There are really only two kinds of pictures: Women with babies and those without. Women with babies are usually called Madonna and Child. Pictures of young nude women are commonly called Venus. But I suppose that is not the point, beyond the similarity of the image is the details of the picture that tell you a lot about the people (in portraits) and the artist’s feelings about events. On the surface the art must please the person who commissioned it. The details can tell all kinds of fascinating things about what the artist thought about when he did the painting. From the Middle Ages on (and maybe before), icons were placed as symbols in pictures to remind you of (and to symbolize) ideas in the picture. Every artist does this to some extent; it is a game to figure out the meanings. But never-ever believe an art historian about the meaning of art! They specialize in making up stories about icons and symb
