Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts displays American 20th-century hand-drawn animation alongside French 18th-century art to reveal the surprising and enchanting connections between these two artistic movements. 

Drawing on the outstanding artworks of the Wallace Collection and spectacular international loans, the exhibition will highlight the exceptional talent and innovation of both Walt Disney Animation Studios artists and the creative pioneers of the French 18th century. Although separated by two centuries, the artists, craftspeople and animators all had the same ambition – to breathe life, character, and charm into the inanimate.

A court has ordered an asset sale to help settle their claims that includes the bank’s art collection, featuring works by Tiepolo, Bellini and Tintoretto, as well as by the 17th-century chiaroscuro master Caravaggio. 

“The Crowning of Thorns could alone be worth more than €500 million and the value of the entire collection, which contains some of Italy’s most renowned artists, is huge,” said Gloria Gatti, an art lawyer and contributor to the Italian art publication Giornale dell’Arte.

“It is unlikely anyone will want to pay the market price if they cannot enjoy it,” Gatti said.

This latest volume in the Frick Diptych series focuses on Fragonard’s Progress of Love ensemble, a jewel in the crown of the Frick’s collection. An illuminating essay by Xavier F. Salomon, Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, is paired with a lyrical piece by the Man Booker Prize–winning author Alan Hollinghurst.  

Designed to foster critical engagement and interest specialist and non-specialist alike, each book in this series illuminates a single work in the Frick’s rich collection with an essay by a Frick curator paired with a contribution from a contemporary artist or writer.

New displays will give visitors a better understanding of the international significance of The Burrell Collection’s artworks and the people who made them and some of the people who have owned them. In total 225 displays will spread across 24 galleries. The displays include innovative digital elements such as video walls, interactives and hybrid systems created to help people engage with the stories behind the Collection. 

A new central stairway will allow visitors access to the lower floor of The Burrell Collection for the first time, where they can watch items not on display being cared for. A new temporary exhibition space has also been created. Similarly, new galleries have been created on upper floors which will take visitors to spaces in the building they have never seen before. 

The museum’s environmental performance has been enhanced by greatly improving the building’s exterior through a new roof, glazing and cladding, and by replacing power, heating and lighting systems with more efficient and sustainable technologies.

More portraits survive of Lucy Harington Russell, 3rd Countess of Bedford (1580-1627) than of any other non-royal Jacobean woman. A Lady of the Bedchamber to James I’s queen, Anna of Denmark, the charismatic Lucy performed in elite Court entertainments and was a patron of writers, including poet John Donne. Currently on loan to the Queen’s House from Woburn Abbey are important full-lengths of Lucy wearing fantastical masque costume, of 1605-6, and a slightly later one of Queen Anna herself. Art historian Karen Hearn will discuss both portraits and consider some further remarkable images of Lady Bedford.

The Nationalmuseum in Stockholm is home to the world's largest collection of miniature paintings, 5,700 in all. The majority of them are are portrait miniatures, by Swedish and other European artists from the 16th century down to the middle of the 20th. The collection is remarkable not only for its size, but just as much for its breadth and depth. No other holding is as representative of miniature paitning across Europe. Despite this, the collection has remained unknown to many outside specialst circles. This volume provides, for the first time, a comprehensive introduction to the Museum's large holding of miniatures, a combined guide and history written by Magnus Olausson, Director of Collections. At the same time, it offers a survey of the history of miniature painting, with examples drawn exclusively from the Nationalmuseum. A good deal of space is devoted both to the nations of major significance for this art form and to individual miniaturists, as well as to aspects of the subject such as the roles of artist and patron, the uses and functions of miniatures, and materials and techniques. the last of these sections is written by miniatures conservator Cecilia rönnerstam.

This book is the first comprehensive publication on Scottish portraiture from the period 1644 to 1714, with an emphasis on the painters David Scougall (1625-1685), and his son John Scougall (1657-1737). It is based on in-depth art historical and archival research. As such, it is an important academic contribution to this thus far little-researched field. Virtually nothing was known about the Scougall portraitists, who also include the somewhat obscure George Scougall (active c. 1690-1737). Thorough archival research has provided substantial biographical information. It has yielded life dates and data on family relations and, also, it has become clear that David Scougall had two parallel careers, as a portrait painter and as a writer (solicitor). The legal community in which the Scougalls were embedded has been defined, as well as an extended group of sitters and their social, economic, and family networks. The book includes a catalogue raisonné of the oeuvre of David Scougall. 

The most important contemporaries of the Scougalls were the portraitist L. Schüneman (active c. 1655/60-1667 or slightly later), his successor James Carrudus (active c. 1668-1683 or later), whose work is identified for the first time in this book, David Paton (c. 1650-in or after 1708), Jacob Jacobsz. de Wet (1641/42-1697) and Sir John Baptist Medina (1659-1710). Their lives and work are discussed. An extensive survey of Scottish portraits, with an emphasis on the work of the Scougall painters, is presented for the period 1644 to 1714. Numerous attributions to various artists and sitter identifications have been established or revised. An overview of the next generation is provided, in which the oeuvres and biographical details are highlighted of the principal portrait painters, such as William Aikman (1682-1731), Richard Waitt (1684-1733) and John Alexander (1686-1767). Countless paintings have been photographed anew or for the first time, and have been compared in detail, which had hardly been done before, while information is also included on technical aspects and (original) frames. The resulting data have been complemented by analysing the social and (art-) historical context in which the portraits were made. The works of the portrait painters in Scotland from this period, as this book shows, now form a solid bridge between the portraits painted prior to George Jamesone’s death in 1644, and those by the renowned Scottish painters of the eighteenth century.

Margaret van Eyck, a house called ‘The Wild Sea’ and Jan van Eyck’s posthumous workshop BY JAN DUMOLYN, SUSAN JONES, WARD LELOUP, TOON DE MEESTER, MATHIJS SPEECKE

The ‘Weston Altarpiece’ in the Museum of the Order of St John, Clerkenwell BY RICHARD WEST

‘The crucifixion of St Peter’: Gerard Seghers, Michelangelo and Caravaggio BY ANNE DELVINGT

Christian VII of Denmark’s lost British portraits BY SARA AYRES

The Art of Conservation: XVII: Jan Cornelis Traas, paintings restorer of the Van Gogh family collection BY ELLA HENDRIKS

Colossal orders and a Classical facade: Hoefnagel and Nonsuch revisited BY MARTIN BIDDLE

Christian Theuerkauff (1936–2021) BY MARJORIE TRUSTED

The finding of the infant Bacchus BY LARS HENDRIKMAN

The Palace of Versailles is presenting two masterpieces of 18th-century sculpture, commissioned by Louis XIV and Louis XV respectively: Zéphyr, Flore et l’Amour, and L'Abondance. These works, recently rediscovered and identified after many years of searching, and are now entering the Palace of Versailles’ collections. The exhibition is an opportunity to retrace the unique journey of these works, from their creation to their entrance in the national collections.

L’Abondance represents an allegory for renewed prosperity under the auspices of the peace-making king. In 1773, it was placed in the gardens of the Château of Menars (Loir et Cher), inherited by Marquis of Marigny Abel-François Poisson from his sister, the Marquessa of Pompadour. As the Director of the King’s Buildings from 1751 to 1773, Marigny benefited from Louis XV’s generosity. This included the donation of many sculptures kept in the royal warehouses, one of which was Zephr et Flore in 1769. This prestigious collection of sculptures was broken up and dispersed at a sale in 1881, with brothers Alphonse and Edmond de Rothschild both acquiring some of the finest works. This is how Zéphyr et Flore and L’Abondance joined the collections assembled by passionate lover of art, Alphonse de Rothschild, in his iconic Parisian hotel on Rue de Saint-Florentin.

Over the last fifteen years, a selection of sixteenth-century Italian paintings from the national collection have been carefully conserved by the Gallery’s Head of Conservation, Simone Mancini. This free exhibition will showcase eight works depicting the Madonna and her infant child, Jesus Christ, with his cousin Saint John the Baptist. Many of these dramatically restored paintings have never been displayed before. Christ & His Cousin: Renaissance Rediscoveries will explore the symbolism and traditions that underpin these playful and lively compositions, and encourage visitors to reconsider what are often dismissed as conventional and familiar images.