“Floating Lights: 500 Years of European Painting” is part of the Chengdu Museum’s “Art Collection” exhibitions series. As a special art exhibition jointly presented by the Chengdu Museum and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, it brings together classic paintings from Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and other European countries. The paintings exhibited include works of renowned artists such as Titian, El Greco, Rubens, Van Dyck, Lorrain, Rembrandt, Kalf, De Hooch, Watteau, Boucher, Reynolds, Fragonard, Goya, J. M. W. Turner, Corot, Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, and Gauguin. The artworks come from different schools and styles, including the Florentine School, Sienese School, Venetian School, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, and Neo-Impressionism, and show the development of European painting from the early Renaissance to the early 20th century.

The 60 original masterpieces present the extraordinary painting skills and significant artistic values of the masters. This is a retrospective of five hundred years of European painting and its changing times from the end of the 14th century to the beginning of the 20th century, presenting the inspiration and true meaning of form and color, and light and shadow of these great artists. The exhibition is systematically organized according to the subject matter of the paintings, the time of creation, the artistic style, and the background of the artists, and is divided into five major sections, namely “Humanity and Faith: European Historical and Religious Paintings”, “Worldly Affairs and Metaphors: European Allegorical, Still Life, and Genre Paintings”, “Ideals and Individuals: European Portraiture”, “Purity and Reality: European Landscape Paintings”, and “Revolution and Style: European Art after the 19th Century”.