Venice
The jewel-bright, mesmerisingly detailed pictures by Raqib Shaw are a revelation
Describing the Venice Biennale, like pinning down the city itself, is a practical impossibility. There is just too much of…
Stewart Brand: man of ideas and infuriating contrarian
In his 2005 book What The Dormouse Said John Markoff traced the roots of the personal computer industry to the…
Character is king in the latest crime fiction
Thriller writers are hard pressed to stand out in what’s become a very crowded field. As a result, from Cardiff…
Renaissance radical: Carlo Crivelli – Shadows on the Sky at Ikon Gallery reviewed
‘Camp,’ wrote Susan Sontag, ‘is the paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and trompe-l’oeil insects and cracks in…
Jan Morris’s last book is a vade mecum to treasure
Jan Morris, in all her incarnations, was always able to evoke a place and a moment like no other. As…
Albrecht Dürer was a 16th-century Andy Warhol
Gossipy, amusing, a little vain, Albrecht Dürer was a 16th-century Andy Warhol, says Martin Gayford
Why I will miss our mighty cooling towers – and I suspect I am not alone
There are many examples of beautiful old buildings being knocked down in favour of undistinguished new ones. But not everything can be preserved in aspic, says Martin Gayford
Wine by the jug in Venetian Venice
We were discussing travel, that forbidden delight now tantalisingly close. Where would be our first destination? Forswearing originality, I chose…
Feasting on memories of Venice
Dining in catastrophe used to be more interesting: but we must be fair. It was a smaller (and wetter) catastrophe:…
Arthur Jeffress: bright young person of the post-war art scene
The name Arthur Jeffress may not conjure many associations for those not familiar with the London post-war art world, but…
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…
Venice needs Venexit
Some of Venice’s problems are well known: the challenge of conserving her famous buildings, the dangers of poorly managed mass…
Will it be kid pie this Christmas?
A long and messy business is how the chef Rowley Leigh explains his preferred way of eating. Picking at a…
Tintoretto unmasked
Tintoretto was il Furioso. He was a lightning flash or a thunderbolt, a storm in La Serenissima of Renaissance Italy,…
Notes on… Lord Byron in Venice
‘I want to see Venice, and the Alps, and Parmesan cheeses.’ So wrote Lord Byron in 1814, some two years…
Venice all tarted up
Veneta is a Venetian restaurant inside the St James’s Market development south of Piccadilly Circus. I do not like this…
Fickle fortune
Here’s an intriguing thought experiment: could Damien Hirst disappear? By that I mean not the 52-year-old artist himself — that…
High life
I’m in Venice for the film festival that just ended and, as an American humorist once wired his paper: ‘Streets…
RA’s Giorgione show is so rich it’s worth returning to several times
Walter Sickert was once shown a room full of paintings by a proud collector, who had purchased them on the…
Renaissance master? Rascal? Thief? In search of Giorgione
Question-marks over attribution are at the heart of a forthcoming Giorgione exhibition. Martin Gayford sifts through the evidence
The Venice Accademia: is this the smallest great gallery in the world?
The Accademia is one of the smallest of the world’s great art galleries, and picture for picture perhaps the most…
Puccini’s villain as swashbuckling hero
You don’t need to know the opera Tosca to understand and enjoy this book about Puccini’s most notorious villain, Vitellio…
I found the future of privacy among the treasures of Venice
Almost all of Venice’s greatest treasures are on public view. Anyone who visits can look across from the Doge’s Palace…
Italy is so civilised! Even at a mad dash
I sprinted through Milan station, speed-read the departures monitor without stopping, and arrived gasping on platform 8 with two minutes…
Venetian restaurants know I’m English from the back
The Gatto Nero — or ‘Black Cat’ — is in Burano, a tiny island in the Venetian lagoon. It is…
