Renaissance
Was Serbia the real birthplace of the Renaissance?
Where did the Renaissance begin? There has been an official answer to that question since 1550, the date that Giorgio…
The Renaissance master who rescued polyphonic music
Last month I watched conductor Harry Christophers blow through what sounded like an arthritic harmonica but in fact was a…
The Da Vinci world of known unknowns
Was Leonardo really vegetarian, agnostic and a fashion icon? In this searingly brilliant new ‘anti-biography’ we learn there isn’t much we can say about him with any certainty at all
The true birthplace of the Renaissance
The baby reaches out to touch his mother’s scarf: he studies her face intently, and she focuses entirely on him.…
Fascinating insight into the mind of Michelangelo
You’re pushing 60 and an important patron asks you to repeat an artistic feat you accomplished in your thirties. There’s…
The great pretenders
In 1998 curators at the Courtauld Institute received an anonymous phone call informing them that 11 drawings in their collection…
Queen B
You feel a little sorry for Renaissance, the first solo album by Beyoncé in more than six years. It just…
Saint or hustler?
Laura Gascoigne dishes the dirt on Raphael
Renaissance radical
‘Camp,’ wrote Susan Sontag, ‘is the paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and trompe-l’oeil insects and cracks in…
Mourning glory
The room is immersed in semi-darkness. Light filters down from above, glistening on polished marble as if it were flesh.…
Animal magic
If one of the purposes of art is to help us see the world around us, then Sebastião Salgado’s photographs…
Modern master
Gossipy, amusing, a little vain, Albrecht Dürer was a 16th-century Andy Warhol, says Martin Gayford
Master of the notes
Stepping into the Sistine Chapel, the choir loft is probably the last thing you’d notice. ‘Loft’ is, frankly, a stretch…
Going for a song
Alexandra Coghlan on how we became a nation of choirs and carollers
Painting vs sculpture
In an extract from their book, Antony Gormley tells Martin Gayford that the 3-D will always trump the 2-D
Of man’s first disobedience
Obviously, we’re living through an era of censorious puritanism. Granted, the contemporary creeds are different from those of the 16th…
Hello, boys
‘Naughty little nudes,’ my history of art teacher used to say of Cranach’s Eves and Venuses. Aren’t they just? Coquettish…
Strokes of genius
Martin Gayford
Martin Gayford visits the greatest one-artist show on Earth
For a good deal of this autumn, I was living in Venice. This wasn’t exactly a holiday, I’d like to…
Full of lovely paintings that might lead you astray: The Renaissance Nude reviewed
Early in the 16th century, Fra Bartolomeo painted an altarpiece of St Sebastian for the church of San Marco in…
The fascinating story behind one of the best-loved depictions of the Nativity
In the early 1370s an elderly Scandinavian woman living in Rome had a vision of the Nativity. Her name was…
Lorenzo Lotto’s 16th century portraits come startlingly close to photography
You can, perhaps, glimpse Lorenzo Lotto himself in the National Gallery’s marvellous exhibition, Lorenzo Lotto: Portraits. At the base of…
Like today’s conceptual artists, Burne-Jones was more interested in ideas than paint
‘I want big things to do and vast spaces,’ Edward Burne-Jones wrote to his wife Georgiana in the 1870s. ‘And…
Wonderful, overwhelming, once-in-a-lifetime display of Bruegels – get on a plane now
‘About suffering’, W.H. Auden memorably argued in his poem ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’, the old masters ‘were never wrong’. Great…
Bellini vs Mantegna – whose side are you on?
Sometimes Andrea Mantegna was just showing off. For the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, he painted a false ceiling above the…
