#western-art

#western-art

Whether we're reli­gious or not, we can all agree that the Bible isn't just a book. In fact, it's at least 66 of them, 39 Old Tes­ta­ment and 27 in the New, and that's just in the Protes­tant tra­di­tion. Even if you've nev­er read a sin­gle page of the Bible, you may well have a decent idea of what quite a few of those books con­tain: the sto­ries of Adam, Eve, Noah, and the cre­ation in Gen­e­sis; the plagues and Moses part­ing the Red Sea in Exo­dus; the var­i­ous depic­tions of Jesus in the Gospels that define his pop­u­lar image; the apoc­a­lyp­tic grotes­queries of Rev­e­la­tion.

For some eminently wealthy individuals, amassing a first-class art collection is an ideal way to spend their money. And while some high-profile art collectors end up donating their collections to museums or other cultural institutions, others take a different approach, reselling their art after a certain amount of time. Which brings us to this week, when billionaire David I. Koch's collection of Western art hit the auction block at Christie's, setting a number of records in the process.

A huge archive of over two million images of Western art spanning eight centuries has been digitised and published online for the public to explore for free.