The popular adage “bigger is better” is put to the test by “Intimate Visions: Small-Scale European Paintings of the Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries,” on view at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, January 15-September 11.

The exhibition showcases some 70 paintings in the Atheneum’s permanent collection that have rarely been shown in the museum’s grand galleries due to their petite size.

Grouped chronologically, these works span a variety of subject matter. Religious themes pervade the earliest paintings of the Italian and Northern schools, including the rare, late Fifteenth Century French “Annunciation and Pietà” as well as the “Annunciation” by Caracciolo and the recently restored Francesco Francia “Madonna and Child with St Francis.”

Within the small-scale format, the most popular subject throughout Europe was the still life, with its detailed depictions of insects, birds, flowers and fruit. Chief among the splendid examples on view is “Still Life with Hourglass” by the Seventeenth Century Dutch master Gerrit Dou.

Genre scenes were popular in the Eighteenth Century, and as the form evolved, it encompassed increasingly modern settings and subject matter; Louis Léopold Boilly’s “The Mockery” as well as a pair of paintings by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, a charming boy and girl filled with sexual innuendo. Humor and careful observation of human behavior are evident in Jehan-Georges Vibert’s “The Schism” and in Jean Béraud’s treatment of a typical urban view in “Paris Street Scene.”

Nineteenth Century painting is dominated by landscapes and this exhibition shows fine examples by Camille Corot and other Barbizon masters Henri Julien Rousseau, Diaz de la Peña, and Charles François Daubigny.

The Wadsworth Atheneum is at 600 Main Street. For information, 860-838-4058 or wadsworthatheneum.org.