The recently identified portrait of Konstantinos XI Palaiologos in a monastery church provides new insights into Byzantine art and its historical context, particularly during the mid-Byzantine period.
"The same institution that values tradition above almost everything else has quietly acknowledged that artistic merit isn't about the tools you use - it's about what you create with them."
Celia Paul, known for her haunting portraits and landscapes, trained at the Slade and had a ten-year relationship with Lucian Freud, resulting in their son Frank.
The restoration confirmed previous reports that Raphael wished to paint imagery directly onto the walls of the four rooms. Two female figures, uncovered during a previous restoration and attributed to Raphael, were found to be painted in this way-supporting the fact they are indeed by the master.
Ali Smith's essay on Edvard Munch is a door opener for understanding the artist's immediate approach to painting. The gift of Munch is that he strips back everything that is not important.
"A lot of people say that the varnish should never be removed, that that's a patina that is on the surface of the painting and that it adds to the painting's quality: it makes the painting look better, it makes it look more serious," says Baumgartner.
In 1968 Celmins's medium shifted. "I dropped paint," she says, "because I was not satisfied with it. I fell for the pencil-maybe so I could explore its ability to be dense yet precise."
What is even less widely known is that, in the past, two ambassadors have brought their Van Gogh masterpieces with them to enhance the house's reception rooms.
Weston was central to the movement to elevate photography beyond its documentary origins, championing pure photography with sharp focus, detail, and unmanipulated imagery.
