Most recent articles
Here are articles that have recently been included in the Journal:
Millais, Charles Dickens and the Holy Family: 19th century artist John Everett Millais’ sensational Christ in the House of his Parents provoked howls of outrage and ridicule from the critics, including Charles Dickens. We analyse what their hostility tells us about attitudes in Victorian England to the “proper” roles of religion and art.
Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat: heroes and villains in the French Revolution - we examine how and why a respectable 24-year-old woman, carried out a carefully-planned assassination, and how its depiction in art transformed the death into a potent instrument of propaganda.
The dramatic life of a controversial masterpiece: Leonardo’s portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci: we examine this little masterpiece and try to make sense of its extraordinarily chequered history
Seeing the Light: Bruegel’s Conversion of Saul: we look closely at the mysteries that surround this controversial painting -- was this painting simply about a miraculous conversion, or did it also contain crucial links to traumatic current events?
Gabriel Metsu and the gentle art of letter writing: we examine the 17th century craze for writing and reading letters, and how this became a major feature in Dutch art, featuring in masterful paintings by artists such as Gabriel Metsu and Jan Vermeer
Emerging from Obscurity: Georges de La Tour’s Musicians’ Quarrel: a detailed look at a painting by an artist who has achieved extraordinary fame after having been forgotten or ignored for almost three centuries
Deception and Misdirection: Hieronymus Bosch’s The Conjuror; we explore this enigmatic 15th century painting of trickery and deception, whose real meaning has remained disputed to this day
Murder, Caravaggio and The Taking of Christ: the Irish rediscovery of a lost masterpiece by Caravaggio, and its unexpected connection with a murder over a hundred years ago
Bruegel and the Two Faces of Summer: Haymaking and the Harvesters: two paintings from a series described as the highpoint of Bruegel’s lifework, and a milestone in the development of European landscape painting.
Forgotten Women Artists #6: Christina Robertson: A Scottish artist in Russia: co-authored by Dr Elizaveta P Renné & Jane Anderson, this examines the extraordinary life & career of a highly successful 19C Scottish painter who became virtually forgotten in her homeland after she left to pursue her art career in Russia
Reflections on a Masterpiece: Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère -- an analysis of Manet’s last and perhaps greatest masterpiece, described as “one of the canonical images for modernist art history”
The Art of Shadows: the many, often-overlooked, ways in which cast shadows are used by artists ~ or not used ~ to convey reality, mood or information in their works
An Exploration of Vision Reality and Illusion -- Jan van Eyck's Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele; we analyse how this highly advanced 15th century artist was able to manipulate illusions in order to create a totally convincing and realistic world
Exploring Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street, Rainy Day: an exploration of Caillebotte’s famous painting, sometimes described as his masterpiece, and of his lesser-known but major achievements in a wide range of other fields (March 2023)
How one man saved the “greatest picture in the world” -- the story of how a WW2 artillery commander risked court martial to save Piero della Francesca’s 15th century masterpiece The Resurrection. (November 2022)
Carpaccio's Miracle on the Rialto: an extraordinary painting that features a miracle, a splinter and an exorcism, not to mention slaves and a small fluffy dog (July 2022)
Masters of All they Survey -- Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Andrews: it's one of England’s most popular paintings, though it was unfinished & long hidden from public view, and there are notable controversies over its meaning (June 2022)
Vermeer’s concert, the Gardner collection, and the art heist of the century: how Jan Vermeer's The Concert became the centrepiece in a massive, unsolved art theft (April 2022)
Forgotten Women Artists #5 Thérèse Schwartze: we examine the life and career of Thérèse Schwartze, a talented Dutch artist who achieved the peak of fame and success over a century ago, only to fade into obscurity.(January 2022)
Bruegel's Peasant Wedding Feast: the case of the missing bridegroom and other mysteries (September 2021)
A very rich book for the very rich: a detailed look at the 15th century ‘January’ miniature from The Limbourg brothers' Très Riches Heures of the Duke de Berry (May 2021)
Bruegel’s White Christmas: The Census at Bethlehem: the masterpiece that was probably the first-ever painting of a White Christmas, and one of the first times that a painter ever depicted this pivotal Biblical episode (February 2021)
Understanding Petrus Christus’ A Goldsmith in his Shop: we look at the various interpretations of what this 15th century masterpiece actually depicts (November 2020)
Millet and the Angelus: the strange story of how this painting of potato farmers sold for a fortune, inspired patriotic fervour, a madman’s attack, an obsession by van Gogh, a possible dead baby & the introduction of a revolutionary new way of rewarding artists [August 2020]
The Sphinx of Delft: the astonishing twists and turns in the reputation of the celebrated 17th century Dutch artist Jan Vermeer [April 2020]
The Two Women in White: we examine two extraordinary creations, both involving mysterious women in white, that enthralled and shocked 1860s Britain ~ Wilkie Collins’ bestselling novel and Whistler’s outrageous portrait [January 2020]
Lost in Translation: Bruegel’s Tower of Babel: we examine the origins of this iconic work, and explore what the artist was trying to say [October 2019]
Rose-Marie Ormond: John Singer Sargent’s muse and “the most charming girl that ever lived” [June 2019]
Forgotten Women Artists #4: Michaelina Wautier: in the fourth in our series on forgotten women artists, we analyse how the reputation of Michaelina Wautier has been resuscitated after a break of more than three centuries [April 2019]
The extraordinary career of Granville Redmond ~ deaf artist, silent movie actor and mentor to Charlie Chaplin [January 2019]
Perception and Blindness in the 16th Century: Bruegel’s The Blind Leading the Blind: our analysis of this painting by Bruegel, a work that has been described as one of the finest pictures ever painted [October 2018]
The rescue of the fabulous lost library of Deir al-Surian. The momentous rescue of one of the greatest libraries in Christendom, from the desolate wastes of the Egyptian Desert (June 2018)
Forgotten Women Artists #3: Marie-Gabrielle Capet: In the third in our series on forgotten women artists, we look at the life and works of the talented but obscure 18C French painter Marie-Gabrielle Capet (Mar 2018)
Millais, Charles Dickens and the Holy Family: 19th century artist John Everett Millais’ sensational Christ in the House of his Parents provoked howls of outrage and ridicule from the critics, including Charles Dickens. We analyse what their hostility tells us about attitudes in Victorian England to the “proper” roles of religion and art.
Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat: heroes and villains in the French Revolution - we examine how and why a respectable 24-year-old woman, carried out a carefully-planned assassination, and how its depiction in art transformed the death into a potent instrument of propaganda.
The dramatic life of a controversial masterpiece: Leonardo’s portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci: we examine this little masterpiece and try to make sense of its extraordinarily chequered history
Seeing the Light: Bruegel’s Conversion of Saul: we look closely at the mysteries that surround this controversial painting -- was this painting simply about a miraculous conversion, or did it also contain crucial links to traumatic current events?
Gabriel Metsu and the gentle art of letter writing: we examine the 17th century craze for writing and reading letters, and how this became a major feature in Dutch art, featuring in masterful paintings by artists such as Gabriel Metsu and Jan Vermeer
Emerging from Obscurity: Georges de La Tour’s Musicians’ Quarrel: a detailed look at a painting by an artist who has achieved extraordinary fame after having been forgotten or ignored for almost three centuries
Deception and Misdirection: Hieronymus Bosch’s The Conjuror; we explore this enigmatic 15th century painting of trickery and deception, whose real meaning has remained disputed to this day
Murder, Caravaggio and The Taking of Christ: the Irish rediscovery of a lost masterpiece by Caravaggio, and its unexpected connection with a murder over a hundred years ago
Bruegel and the Two Faces of Summer: Haymaking and the Harvesters: two paintings from a series described as the highpoint of Bruegel’s lifework, and a milestone in the development of European landscape painting.
Forgotten Women Artists #6: Christina Robertson: A Scottish artist in Russia: co-authored by Dr Elizaveta P Renné & Jane Anderson, this examines the extraordinary life & career of a highly successful 19C Scottish painter who became virtually forgotten in her homeland after she left to pursue her art career in Russia
Reflections on a Masterpiece: Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère -- an analysis of Manet’s last and perhaps greatest masterpiece, described as “one of the canonical images for modernist art history”
The Art of Shadows: the many, often-overlooked, ways in which cast shadows are used by artists ~ or not used ~ to convey reality, mood or information in their works
An Exploration of Vision Reality and Illusion -- Jan van Eyck's Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele; we analyse how this highly advanced 15th century artist was able to manipulate illusions in order to create a totally convincing and realistic world
Exploring Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street, Rainy Day: an exploration of Caillebotte’s famous painting, sometimes described as his masterpiece, and of his lesser-known but major achievements in a wide range of other fields (March 2023)
How one man saved the “greatest picture in the world” -- the story of how a WW2 artillery commander risked court martial to save Piero della Francesca’s 15th century masterpiece The Resurrection. (November 2022)
Carpaccio's Miracle on the Rialto: an extraordinary painting that features a miracle, a splinter and an exorcism, not to mention slaves and a small fluffy dog (July 2022)
Masters of All they Survey -- Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Andrews: it's one of England’s most popular paintings, though it was unfinished & long hidden from public view, and there are notable controversies over its meaning (June 2022)
Vermeer’s concert, the Gardner collection, and the art heist of the century: how Jan Vermeer's The Concert became the centrepiece in a massive, unsolved art theft (April 2022)
Forgotten Women Artists #5 Thérèse Schwartze: we examine the life and career of Thérèse Schwartze, a talented Dutch artist who achieved the peak of fame and success over a century ago, only to fade into obscurity.(January 2022)
Bruegel's Peasant Wedding Feast: the case of the missing bridegroom and other mysteries (September 2021)
A very rich book for the very rich: a detailed look at the 15th century ‘January’ miniature from The Limbourg brothers' Très Riches Heures of the Duke de Berry (May 2021)
Bruegel’s White Christmas: The Census at Bethlehem: the masterpiece that was probably the first-ever painting of a White Christmas, and one of the first times that a painter ever depicted this pivotal Biblical episode (February 2021)
Understanding Petrus Christus’ A Goldsmith in his Shop: we look at the various interpretations of what this 15th century masterpiece actually depicts (November 2020)
Millet and the Angelus: the strange story of how this painting of potato farmers sold for a fortune, inspired patriotic fervour, a madman’s attack, an obsession by van Gogh, a possible dead baby & the introduction of a revolutionary new way of rewarding artists [August 2020]
The Sphinx of Delft: the astonishing twists and turns in the reputation of the celebrated 17th century Dutch artist Jan Vermeer [April 2020]
The Two Women in White: we examine two extraordinary creations, both involving mysterious women in white, that enthralled and shocked 1860s Britain ~ Wilkie Collins’ bestselling novel and Whistler’s outrageous portrait [January 2020]
Lost in Translation: Bruegel’s Tower of Babel: we examine the origins of this iconic work, and explore what the artist was trying to say [October 2019]
Rose-Marie Ormond: John Singer Sargent’s muse and “the most charming girl that ever lived” [June 2019]
Forgotten Women Artists #4: Michaelina Wautier: in the fourth in our series on forgotten women artists, we analyse how the reputation of Michaelina Wautier has been resuscitated after a break of more than three centuries [April 2019]
The extraordinary career of Granville Redmond ~ deaf artist, silent movie actor and mentor to Charlie Chaplin [January 2019]
Perception and Blindness in the 16th Century: Bruegel’s The Blind Leading the Blind: our analysis of this painting by Bruegel, a work that has been described as one of the finest pictures ever painted [October 2018]
The rescue of the fabulous lost library of Deir al-Surian. The momentous rescue of one of the greatest libraries in Christendom, from the desolate wastes of the Egyptian Desert (June 2018)
Forgotten Women Artists #3: Marie-Gabrielle Capet: In the third in our series on forgotten women artists, we look at the life and works of the talented but obscure 18C French painter Marie-Gabrielle Capet (Mar 2018)