Michelangelo
How a single year in Florence changed art forever
The story goes that one day early in the 16th century Leonardo da Vinci was strolling through Florence with a…
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…
Artistic achievements that changed the world
‘Astonish me!’ was the celebrated demand that the impresario Sergei Diaghilev made of Jean Cocteau when he was devising Erik…
Raphael – saint or hustler?
Laura Gascoigne dishes the dirt on Raphael
Beautiful and revealing: The Three Pietàs of Michelangelo, at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence, reviewed
The room is immersed in semi-darkness. Light filters down from above, glistening on polished marble as if it were flesh.…
The Sistine Chapel as you've never seen it before
Rosie Millard gets her gloved hands on one of the world’s most lavish – and expensive – art books
Antony Gormley on why sculpture is far superior to painting
In an extract from their book, Antony Gormley tells Martin Gayford that the 3-D will always trump the 2-D
Entertaining – but there's one abomination: National Gallery's Sin reviewed
Obviously, we’re living through an era of censorious puritanism. Granted, the contemporary creeds are different from those of the 16th…
Why the Royal Academy is wrong to consider selling their precious Michelangelo
Martin Gayford explains why the Royal Academy would be wrong to sell Michelangelo’s ‘Taddei Tondo’
Why did David Bomberg disappear?
David Bomberg was only 23 when his first solo exhibition opened in July 1914 at the Chenil Gallery in Chelsea.…
The odd couple: Bill Viola / Michelangelo at the RA reviewed
The joint exhibition of Michelangelo Buonarroti and Bill Viola at the Royal Academy is, at first glance, an extremely improbable…
Tell them of Battles, Kings and Elephants, by Mathias Enard, reviewed
Michelangelo seems never to have travelled to Turkey to advise the Sultan on a bridge to span the Golden Horn,…
How lucky we are to have the Royal Academy
What is the Royal Academy? This question set me thinking as I wandered through the crowds that celebrated the opening…
Art and aspiration
When Adam Gopnik arrived in Manhattan in late 1980 he was an art history postgrad so poor that he and…
Why we love unfinished art
An unfinished painting can provide a startling glimpse of the artist at work. But the common tendency to prefer it to a finished work is being taken to extremes, says Philip Hensher
A short history of statue-toppling
Sculptural topplings provide an index of changing times, says Martin Gayford
I can’t stop thinking about the Courtauld’s Unfinished exhibition
A while ago, David Hockney mused on a proposal to tax the works of art stored in artists’ studios. ‘You’d…
Reimaging the lost masterpieces of antiquity
Martin Gayford visits two new surveys of Greek and Roman sculpture at the British Museum and Palazzo Strozzi. Reimagining what’s lost is as much of an inspiration as what remains
The dos and don’ts of the Russian art scene
They’re doing fantastic deals on five-star hotels in St Petersburg the weekend the Francis Bacon exhibition opens at the Hermitage.…
Portrait of the week
Home MPs voted by 382 to 128 to make Britain the only country to allow genetic modification of embryos to…
Without a model, Moroni could be stunningly dull. With one, he was peerless...
Giovanni Battista Moroni, wrote Bernard Berenson, was ‘the only mere portrait painter that Italy has ever produced’. Indeed, Berenson continued,…
Things to do: read this book
It would be perverse not to succumb to the temptation to write this review as a list. So, the first…
Michelangelo’s vision was greater even than Shakespeare’s
Alasdair Palmer reveals the monstrous egomaniac behind Michelangelo’s artistic genius
Clarissa Tan's Notebook: Why I stopped drinking petrol
Florence was in fog the day I arrived. Its buildings were bathed in white cloud, its people moved as though…
