Sistine Chapel
A feast for quiz-lovers: Christmas gift books
Delightful oddities include: foreign equivalents of ‘Joe Bloggs’; alternatives to the word ‘Hello’; and El Greco’s offer to repaint the Sistine Chapel
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…
Divine revelation
Rosie Millard gets her gloved hands on one of the world’s most lavish – and expensive – art books
Why I won’t be turning Catholic just yet
I didn’t get an audience with the Pope when I visited Rome last weekend. But given that he’s a borderline…
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…
The Vatican
The sun has only just risen in Rome and we are standing bleary-eyed in a short queue outside the Vatican.…
All too human
Alasdair Palmer reveals the monstrous egomaniac behind Michelangelo’s artistic genius
A Herculean achievement
Early on in this dazzling new biography, Martin Gayford compares Michelangelo, with his daunting artistic tasks, to Hercules, the subject…
