Masterpieces: Great Paintings of the World in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Mixed from egg whites and vegetable tints, water and soot, oils and rare minerals and applied to bone, wood, metal and canvas, the plastic and expressive properties of paint have stirred artists and their admirers throughout history. The holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have grown into a formidable appraisal of one of humankind's oldest and most diverse forms of artistic expression—from its first acquisition, Washington Allston's "Elijah in the Desert" (1818), to recently acquire...