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As Europe starts opening up to travelers again, it’s more exciting than ever to think about the cultural treasures that await. For me, one of the great joys of travel is having in-person encounters with great art — which I’ve collected in a book called Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces. Here’s one of my favorites:   

This woman’s haunting face makes it clear right away that — despite the sumptuous beauty of this painting — it doesn’t tell a happy tale. The Lady of Shalott knows she’s floating down a river to her doom. 

The English artist John William Waterhouse depicts the dramatic climax of a legendary tale. The Lady of Shalott had spent her whole life shut up in a castle near King Arthur’s Camelot, forbidden to even look outside, upon pain of death. She could only observe the world indirectly through the reflection in her mirror. But one day, the handsome knight Lancelot rode by. She was so smitten that she broke the rules and looked directly at him. Now she’s followed his tracks and boarded a boat, releasing the mooring chain, as she sets off into the unknown to find her beloved, whatever the cost. 

The riverside landscape — the reeds, the inky water, the darkening atmosphere, even birds in flight — evokes the melancholy beauty of the moment. Ms. Shalott burns brightly, her white gown and red hair radiating from the dark background. Waterhouse focused on evocative details, like the Lady’s wispy hair, pearl necklace, lightly rumpled dress, and cupped hand. For the Lady’s face, he painted his own wife. The colors — reds, greens, and blues — are bright, clear, and luminous, glowing like stained-glass windows. 

The whole scene looks medieval, yet it was painted during an Industrial Age when Britain was leading the world in new technologies like electricity and trains. While Victorian Britain sped forward, its artists looked to the past. Waterhouse was inspired by a group of British artists called the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,” who reveled in painting medieval damsels and legendary lovers with heartbreaking beauty. 

The Pre-Raphaelites hated overacting. So — even in the face of great tragedy, high passions, and moral dilemmas — this Lady barely raises an eyebrow. But her surroundings speak volumes. Night is falling, foreshadowing her dark destiny. The first leaf of autumn has fallen, landing near her thigh. She brings the bright tapestry she wove in captivity, with scenes of the comforting world of illusion she once knew. Now she’s guided only by a dim lantern on the prow, a small crucifix to fortify her faith, and three fragile candles — only one of which still burns.  

Victorians of all ages knew this Romantic legend (which was also a best-selling poem by Tennyson). Everyone could read their own meaning into the painting: The Lady has chosen to leave her safe-but-deluded existence to pursue truth. She’s following her heart, despite the dangers. She’s taking the risk to find intimacy, love, and sex even at the expense of losing herself in the process. The expression on her face shows a mix of fear, hope, vulnerability, and a realization that — whatever comes — this is her destiny. 

She lets the chain go. Then, “like some bold seer in a trance,” wrote Tennyson, she goes “down the river’s dim expanse.” In the legend, the Lady of Shalott’s boat headed downstream and washed ashore at Camelot, where Lancelot saw it and mourned for her. She had succumbed to the curse of seeing the world as it is. 

As Europe starts opening up to travelers again, it’s more exciting than ever to think about the cultural treasures that await. For me, one of the great joys of travel is having in-person encounters with great art — which I’ve collected in a book called Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces. Here’s one of my favorites:   

For 2,000 years, the Parthenon temple in Athens remained almost perfectly intact. But in 1687, with Athens under siege, the Parthenon was used to store a huge cache of gunpowder. (See where this is going?) Pow! A massive explosion sent huge chunks of the Parthenon everywhere. Then in 1801, the British ambassador, Lord Elgin, carted the most precious surviving bits of carved stone off to London, where they wow visitors to this day — the “Elgin Marbles.” 

London’s British Museum shows off the statues and relief panels that once decorated the top of the Parthenon’s now-bare exterior. The reliefs, carved in about 430 BC, are part of the 500-foot-long frieze that once ringed the temple. They show 56 snapshots from ancient Athens’ most festive occasion: a grand parade up the Acropolis hill to celebrate the city’s birthday. 

The parade begins with men on horseback, struggling to rein in their spirited steeds. Next come musicians playing flutes, while ladies dance. Distinguished citizens ride in chariots, kids scamper alongside, and priests lead ceremonial oxen for sacrifice. At the heart of the procession is a group of teenage girls. Dressed in elegant pleated robes, they shuffle along carrying gifts for the gods, like incense burners and jugs of wine. 

The girls were entrusted with the parade’s most important gift: a folded-up robe. As the parade culminated inside the Parthenon, the girls symbolically presented the robe to the temple’s 40-foot-tall gold-and-ivory statue of Athena.  

The realism is incredible: the men’s well-defined muscles, the horses’ bulging veins. The girls’ intricately pleated robes make them look as stable as fluted columns, but they step out naturally — the human form emerging from the stone. These panels were originally painted in bold colors. Amid the bustle of details, the frieze has one unifying element — all the heads are at the same level, headed the same direction, creating a single ribbon of humanity around the Parthenon. 

The Parthenon’s main entrance was decorated with a grandiose scene depicting the moment when the city of Athens was born. These statues nestled inside the triangular-shaped pediment over the door. It shows the Greek gods lounging around at an Olympian banquet. Suddenly, there’s a stir of activity. The gods turn toward a miraculous event: Zeus has just had his head split open to reveal Athena, the symbol of the city. (Unfortunately, that key scene is missing — it’s the empty space at the peak of the triangle.)  

These pediment statues are realistic and three-dimensional, reclining in completely natural and relaxed poses. The women’s robes cling and rumple naturally, revealing their perfect anatomy underneath.  

A final set of relief panels (the so-called metopes) depict a Greek legend that sums up the entire Parthenon. They show the primeval Greek people brawling with brutish centaurs. It’s a free-for-all of hair-pulling, throat-grabbing, kicks to the shin, and knees to the groin. Finally, the humans get the upper hand — symbolizing how the civilized Athenians triumphed over their barbarian neighbors. 

In real life, the Greeks rallied from a brutal war, and capped their recovery by building the Parthenon. The treasured Elgin Marbles represent the cream of the crop of that greatest of Greek temples. And they capture that moment in human history when civilization triumphed over barbarism, rational thought over animal urges, and order over chaos. 

As Europe starts opening up to travelers again, it’s more exciting than ever to think about the cultural treasures that await. For me, one of the great joys of travel is having in-person encounters with great art and architecture — which I’ve collected in a book called Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces. Here’s one of my favorites:   

Beauty can take many forms. But since the very beginnings of the human species, the most popular subject for artists has always been the female body. Long before the end of the Ice Age, Europeans were fashioning small statues of women. 

The chubby Venus of Willendorf (c. 25,000 BC), found in modern-day Austria, is shown resting her spindly arms on her ample breasts. At just 4.4 inches high, this statue is like many such statues of the day. Most are no bigger than a smartphone. They’re carved out of stone or bone, or molded from clay. They’re generic females, with no face or feet. The hips are wide, and the breasts and butt are exaggerated, with a prominent vaginal slit. This focus on women’s life-giving attributes has led scholars to suggest they’re symbols of fertility. Living at the mercy of the elements, the early Europeans who created these may have worshipped Mother Nature. Scholars have dubbed them “Venus figurines.” 

During the long journey from Paleo- to Neo-lithic times, statuettes of Stone Age women shed some 20,000 years of fat to become so-called “Cycladic figures” (c. 3,000 BC). These ladies from the Greek Isles are skinny. They’re always naked, with stylized breasts and folded arms. Because they lack distinct features, it’s suggested that they may represent the Everywoman. But no one knows the exact purpose: Was she a fertility goddess, funereal figure, good-luck charm, spirit guide, prehistoric Barbie doll, caveman Playboy Bunny . . . or just art?  

These “Venuses” were only the start of a 25,000-year tradition of using the beauty of women — yes, you could say objectifying women — to express society’s deepest-held values. 

The word “beauty” can apply to harmonious concepts as well as physical beauty. During the days of classical Greece and Rome, a statue of a perfectly-proportioned person — like the Venus de Milo — epitomized the harmony and geometrical order they found in the divine cosmos. 

In Christian times, “Venus” became “Mary.” Just as Venus represented earthly love to pagans, the Madonna was venerated by Christians as a symbol of divine love. Images of Mary welcomed worshippers into the church, promising love and forgiveness. Because medieval art was rather rudimentary, artists used symbolism to communicate this. A vase of lilies might represent Mary’s chastity, and Baby Jesus might hold a symbol of his prophesied death. By Renaissance times, artists could portray Mary with such human realism that she radiated her spirituality through her physical beauty.  

And so it went, as each era created images of beautiful women to express abstract concepts. Mona Lisa is not merely a portrait of a businessman’s wife; it’s a visual treatise on a geometrically perfect universe. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus embodied the Platonic ideal of the quest for enlightenment. In more modern times, a secular Venus nicknamed “Marianne” (in Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People) carried the torch of France’s revolutionary spirit.  

Throughout art history, artists have used beautiful women as a way to convey deeper meanings. The women of art, which you’ll see featured throughout “Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces” — whether in their role as life-givers, warriors, sensuous vixens, perfect models, symbols of an era, or forthright workers — have always represented the “beauty” of humanity’s greatest ideals.