orchanian's blog

Mikhail Shklyarevsky, Acquisitions Assistant, Frick Art Reference Library, observes that the stern countenance of the sitter in Van Dyck’s portrait of Frans Snyders is the look of a person who has gained wisdom through hardship.

Payton Goad, Executive Assistant, Frick Art Reference Library, vowed to work with Old Masters after seeing Vermeer’s Officer and Laughing Girl when she was a senior in college: “In my eyes, nothing else could compare.”

Lorenzo De Los Angeles III, Reference Assistant, Frick Art Reference Library, considers the French seventeenth-century bronze Hercules and the Hydra in the context of the 1963 sci-fi flick Jason and the Argonauts.

Isabel Losada, Manager for Membership, didn’t hesitate when asked during a job interview, “What work of art best illustrates your work ethic?” Her answer: Goya’s depiction of three metalworkers engaging in intense labor.

Liz Daly, Community Relations Manager, had an epiphany some years ago while looking at El Greco’s St. Jerome: That guy looks exactly like Samuel Beckett.

Monica Sands, Sales Associate, Retail and Visitor Services, imagines her parents stopping to look at Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl during a blind date at The Frick Collection in the mid-1950s.

Tommy Mishima, Museum Shop Inventory Coordinator, recalls seeing Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait in a children’s encyclopedia when he was eight years old. Ten years later, he came face-to-face with the painting for the first time.

This [painting] annihilates time as far as poor mortals may. —William Carlos Williams on Titian’s Portrait of a Man in a Red Hat

The Frick's beloved Mistress and Maid (1666–67) by Johannes Vermeer poses many unanswered questions, notably its seemingly unfinished background. A recent technical study in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Doerner Institut uncovers important new information about the painting, one of only thirty-six works attributed to the artist.