Botticelli
The great pretenders
In 1998 curators at the Courtauld Institute received an anonymous phone call informing them that 11 drawings in their collection…
Tuscan chiaroscuro
A trio of formidable British women are enjoying peaceful retirement in Italy – until their idyll is disrupted by a series of unforeseen events
A saint for all seasons
Laura Gascoigne on the pulling power of St Francis of Assisi
The art of window-peeping
Themed exhibitions pegged to particular pictures in museum collections tend to be more interesting to the museum’s curators than to…
An honorary Frenchman
When the Courtauld Gallery’s impressionist pictures were shown at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2019, the Parisian public…
Divine revelation
Rosie Millard gets her gloved hands on one of the world’s most lavish – and expensive – art books
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.…
Florence
Once, it seems, Sandro Botticelli played a trick on a neighbour. Next door was a weaver who possessed eight looms.…
Topsy-turvy
When Tom Birkin, hero of J.L. Carr’s novel A Month in the Country, wakes from sleeping in the sun, it…
Best in show
Martin Gayford recommends the exhibitions to see — and to avoid — over the coming year
