Today’s pieceMichelangelo Buonarroti1509
The Prophet Isaiah
A free, growing showcase of historic Christian art - every piece indexed to the chapter it depicts.
Christian Art - Public Domain Bible Illustrations
Featured
James Tissot · The Life of Christ
Three hundred and sixty-five gouache-on-board paintings completed between 1886 and 1894 - Tissot's pilgrimage to the Holy Land turned into a visual gospel.
Featured artist · this week
James Tissot
1836-1902French
French painter who, after a vision experience in 1885, devoted the rest of his career to an extensive illustrated New Testament based on travel through the Holy Land. His watercolors are now held at the Brooklyn Museum. Read more →
Behold, I make all things new.Revelation 21:5
Style
Renaissance & Baroque masters
Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Fra Angelico - the painters who shaped Western religious imagery.
Style
Devotional realism
Nineteenth-century Northern European painters whose intimate images of Christ were copied into Bibles, prayer cards, and church windows worldwide.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.John 1:1
Style
Romantic & visionary
William Blake's apocalyptic visions, Edward Hicks's Peaceable Kingdoms, Holman Hunt's Pre-Raphaelite light.
Style
Russian & Byzantine icons
Andrei Rublev and Theophanes the Greek - the icon painters whose work survived the Iconoclast Controversy.
Let the little children come unto me.Mark 10:14
Style
19th-century Bible illustrators
Gustave Doré's 241 wood engravings, Schnorr von Carolsfeld's German Picture Bible - the popular illustrated Bibles that shaped modern visual imagination.
Artist
Caravaggio's chiaroscuro
Tenebrist drama from the painter who taught the Baroque how to use light. The Calling of Saint Matthew, the Conversion of Saul, the Supper at Emmaus.
Artist
Rembrandt's gospel scenes
The Return of the Prodigal Son, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Belshazzar's Feast - Rembrandt's tender, light-soaked biblical paintings.
Artist
Doré's Bible engravings
Two hundred and forty-one wood engravings published in 1866, the most widely reproduced visual Bible of the modern era.
Era
The Italian Trecento
Giotto and Duccio at the dawn of Renaissance painting - gold-ground panels that taught Europe how to render sacred figures with weight, gesture, and inner life.
Theme
Madonnas of the Renaissance
Raphael, Fra Angelico, Bellini - the painters who gave Western Christianity its enduring image of the Virgin and Child.
Source
Ancient Latin manuscripts
Folios from the oldest surviving Bibles - the Codex Amiatinus (c. 700, Northumbria), the Vivian Bible (845, Tours), and the Stuttgart Psalter (c. 825, Saint-Germain-des-Prés). Most pages are parchment text; some are full-page illuminations.
Browse by book of the Bible
Every chapter has art indexed to it.
Frequently asked questions
Is the artwork free to use?
The collection is drawn from public-domain works - art old enough that its copyright has expired - gathered from sources like the Metropolitan Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and Wikimedia Commons. Always confirm the status of an individual piece for your own use.
How is the art organized?
Every piece is indexed to the chapter of the Bible it depicts, so you can browse by book, by artist, by era, or by theme - and open the exact chapter a painting illustrates.
Which artists are included?
The library spans two thousand years - Fra Angelico, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Raphael, Gustave Dore, James Tissot, Carl Bloch, Andrei Rublev, and many more, alongside illuminated manuscripts and Byzantine icons.