Having only appeared at auction twice in its 300-year history, in 1751 and 1993, this picture is in a remarkable state of preservation with the surface of the painting beautifully textured and the rich impasto of the figures intact. Inaccessible to scholars throughout much of its history, it has only recently come to light that the picture hung at 10 Downing Street, where it is first recorded in 1736, in the collection of Britain’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745). This illustrious early 18th century provenance makes it – along with its pendant of the Grand Canal – the earliest recorded work by the Venetian master to be hung in an English house, predating King George III’s purchase of Consul Joseph Smith’s Canalettos by a quarter of a century. Exceedingly ambitious in both scale and conception, this highly evocative view is testimony to Canaletto’s prodigious talent and exacting technique, painted at the highpoint of his career. It is his earliest known representation of a subject to which he would return repeatedly, marking the starting point for Canaletto painting such festivities. This picture will be on on view at Christie’s New York from 3 until 15 May, followed by Hong Kong from 22 to 28 May, before returning to London for the pre-sale exhibition from 27 June to 1 July.

After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Candia [the route between Venice and Crete] became the most important artistic centre for the ancient Byzantine tradition, which saw the involvement of over a hundred workshops of ‘madoneri’, especially iconographers producing popular devotional images. At the same time, Venice – like a new Byzantium – welcomed a growing influx of artworks and artists from the Aegean islands. Iconographers, or painters of icons, travelled or immigrated between Crete, the Ionian Islands, and the Venetian capital. This led to a unique synthesis between the native Byzantine courtly tradition – already an essential element of Venetian artistic heritage – and the Western figurative language, which evolved from late Gothic to the Renaissance, becoming more human-centred, naturalistic, and dynamic.

A fortunate relationship developed and remained unbroken between the golden age of the Venetian Renaissance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the early nineteenth century, marked by moments of always original symbiosis. The seven sections of the exhibition chronologically illustrate this unique pictorial journey; at the heart of this fascinating narrative of history and painting stands the most famous and extraordinary figure of the ‘school’: Dominikos Theotokopoulos, or El Greco (1541–1614). Born in Crete, he began his training within the post-Byzantine tradition before making his way to Venice around 1567 – an essential step for artists of the time.

The painting was previously shown in the 2021 landmark exhibition Children of the Renaissance. This exhibition was curated by Dr. Samuel Mareel and was nominated for the International Exhibition of the Year by the Museum+Heritage Awards. Until recently, it belonged to a private collection and was brought to market through the British art dealer James Macdonald Fine Art.

This work is associated with a second portrait, which may depict an older sibling. Together, the two paintings reveal strong iconographic connections with other Habsburg family portraits, such as the triptych of Eleonora, Charles V, and Isabella attributed to the Master of the Mechelen Saint George’s Guild (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), as well as examples from the Royal Collection. A detailed examination and further research will follow this important acquisition.

For the very first time, the work of these two legendary artistic figures will be brought together, co-curated by Harewood House Trust and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York.

In 1775, two icons of British culture were born into an era of huge social change. 250 years later, we celebrate Jane Austen and JMW Turner, uncovering their shared interest in the society and culture of the British country house and its landscape.

We imagine an encounter between these iconic figures, whose innovative works recorded the Regency era. Through Austen’s and Turner’s eyes, the show explores the world of the country house in their time and their impact on how we think about stately homes today.

Thrilling, evocative and rarely seen paintings and manuscripts will bring the Regency country house to life. The original manuscript of Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon joins early Turner watercolours and the very paintbox he used when he visited Harewood – all brought to northern England for the first time for this exhibition.

Rosalind Joy Savill (1951–2024) - By Stephen Duffy and Christopher Baker

A new border from Abbot Suger’s Saint-Denis - By Michael W. Cothren and Mary B. Shepard

Friendship tokens: Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s paintings for Madame de Pompadour - By Yuriko Jackall, John K. Delaney and Michael Swicklik

British press reaction to the London exhibitions of David, Lefèvre, Wicar and Lethière - By Humphrey Wine

Recasting and republicanising Millet’s horizons: Félicien Rops, Jean-François Raffaëlli and Jean-Charles Cazin - By Richard Thomson

Bravery, ingenuity and aerial post: an enamelled bowl by Joséphine-Arthurine Blot - By Daniëlle O. Kisluk-Grosheide

Antoine Caron and Italy - By David Ekserdjian

In its pre-Arches form, the Getty Provenance Index represented provenance information gathered from historic documents by replicating the tabular structure of the source material as flat-file records, meaning each entry was a single, independent row without links to other data points. In the remodeled Getty Provenance Index in Arches, those flat-file records have been transformed into a linked open data system. This means each entity is uniquely identified and connected to other relevant data using controlled vocabularies and semantic connections. This remodeling from relational to graph data transforms the implicit relationships recorded in a flat-file row into an explicit, relational web of entities that consolidates people, objects, places, and events into uniquely identified resources.

In Arches, Getty Provenance Index data is generated through events. Often, but not always, these events are related to historic transfers of ownership. These events create data that populates one of nine Resource Models used in the Provenance Index: Activity, Group, Person, Physical Object, Place, Provenance Activity, Set, Textual Work, and Visual Work. These models are based on the Linked.Art metadata application profile of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) reference model.

The identity of the artist responsible for this impressive panel is a mystery. In fact, whether the painter was Netherlandish or French is up for debate. The overall sense of plasticity, monumentality, and the strong shadows recall the work of French painters like Jean Hey. On the other hand, the composition and versatile execution – alternating smoothly painted areas and minute details with more dynamic passages – pay homage to the Netherlandish tradition of Jan van Eyck (The Virgin and Child with the Canon Joris van der Paele; Bruges, Groeningemuseum) and Hugo van der Goes (The Portinari Altarpiece; Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi). The Netherlandish hypothesis is supported by the painting’s Baltic oak panel, since French artists tended to use locally sourced oak.

Stylistic parallels can be found with the early work of Jan Gossaert. The dramatically foreshortened faces of the saints and angels are reminiscent of some of his early drawings, for instance the left saint of The Holy Family with Saints (c. 1510-5; Albertina, Vienna). The treatment of the brocade and metalwork compares well with passages from Gossaert’s Adoration of the Kings (London, National Gallery). Both artists also used similar underdrawing techniques, especially the way of sketching the ocular cavities, the knuckles, the shading of the Virgin’s forehead, and the absence of wash. The eccentricity that pervades the panel also recalls Gossaert’s manner. This painting challenges art historians’ tendency to focus on names and demonstrates that for the late medieval and Renaissance periods, anonymity can intersect with extraordinary quality.

This PhD will explore the lives and careers of people who painted and decorated working-class and lower-middle-class homes and lodging houses in the early modern period. The project will involve extensive archival research in numerous British collections. The successful candidate will also be involved in the museum's upcoming redisplay of the early modern period rooms.

This project will be jointly supervised by Dr Matthew Walker (Assistant Professor in Architectural History), Dr Frank Salmon (Associate Professor in the History of Art) at Cambridge; and, at the Museum of the Home, by Marina Maniadaki (Exhibitions and Project Manager) and Louis Platman (Curator and Research Manager).

Uroš Predić is regarded as one of the most significant Serbian painters of the 19th and 20th centuries and a leading figure of academic realism. Born on 7 December 1857 in Orlovat, then part of the Austrian Empire (now Serbia), he pursued his artistic education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna between 1876 and 1880, where he was influenced by the traditions of the Vienna Academy and its professors, including Christian Griepenkerl and the principles of Realism. These influences are evident in his meticulous technique and his commitment to achieving lifelike representation. After completing his studies, he initially worked in Vienna before returning to his hometown of Orlovat in 1885.

This lecture examines a series of plantation landscapes made in seventeenth-century colonial Dutch Brazil. Taking up the concept of the necropastoral, this paper investigates how these seemingly idyllic scenes indicate the enormous human and environmental degradation perpetuated by the forcible extraction of labour from enslaved African people and of sugar from the Atlantic Forest.

During the period of the Dutch colonization of a portion of northeastern Brazil, Post painted the first representations of the “New World.” After his return to the Netherlands, he continued painting Brazilian themes but with fantastical elements, as seen in Landscape with Anteater, in which an anteater and an armadillo appear larger than life. Even more fanciful than the oversized creatures is the painting’s depiction of Black people living in relative harmony with Indigenous people and European colonists, giving the false impression that the violence and conflicts of slavery and colonialism did not exist there.

With These Hands explores the representation of craft in paintings, drawings, and prints. The process of making and mending by hand whether a domestic pastime, rural and semi-industrial labour, or essential war effort, is a persistent theme to which artists return. Yet these artworks are rarely straightforward observations of everyday activity. Instead, the act of making is used to symbolise personal and communal identity, leisure and work, tradition and progress.

Produced in Britain and Europe from the 1750s onwards, these images reflect a society undergoing immense change. The growth of industry, the reorganisation of the methods and places of work, the changing status of women and the conflicts of World War I and II all impacted the value placed on hand skill. Some artists were interested in capturing traditions – their works romanticising crafts they perceived as almost lost – while others were drawn to the atmosphere and activity of the workshop and factory.

The exhibition charts Osborne’s trajectory from his student days in Dublin and Antwerp through his sojourn in Brittany and his early practice in England before returning to his native city in 1892 to care for his niece and aging parents following the death of his beloved sister Violet. Through his depictions of Dublin’s streets, parks, public spaces, domestic interiors and gardens, countryside, and most importantly its people, a vision of a vibrant––if divided––Ireland emerges. Osborne’s experiences abroad and his commercial acumen helped establish Dublin’s unique brand of Modern painting rife with the possibility of change. Iconic works by the artist on loan from the National Gallery of Ireland, Hugh Lane Gallery, Hunt Museum in Limerick, Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, and private collectors in Ireland and the United States offer a rich tapestry of life and art in Ireland at the close of the nineteenth century.

Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria is a rediscovered painting by Virginia Vezzi, also known as Virginia da Vezzo, whose story is a typical one for a female artist in the early years of the 1600s. Despite her success as a painter in Rome and Paris, her reputation was ignored by contemporary chroniclers and then ultimately lost to the writers of art history in the centuries that followed. Only recently have the biographical details of her life been uncovered, and along with them, her artistic accomplishments.

This is a call for applications to a Summer School in Antwerp/Brussels and Cambridge/London from Tuesday 1st July to Thursday 10th July. 

The focus will be Southern Netherlandish Art, 1500-1700. The summer school is organised by the History of Art Department and Trinity Hall, the University of Cambridge, and the Rubenshuis, Antwerp. The programme is kindly funded by the Government of Flanders. [...]

The programme aims to bring together 12 promising emerging researchers to explore Southern Netherlandish Art through lectures by experts in the field and guided tours of museum collections, churches, and private collections in stately homes. The summer course will present a unique opportunity to expand the participants' networks in Belgium and England.