A poignant moment before the horror — The woman is blindfolded and lowered to her knees. Her executioner stands patiently nearby, his fingers quietly reaching for a great metal axe. But with the blindfold, she is unable to find the block. She stretches out her hands. She becomes unsteady on her knees, tilting to one side. She…

A powerful trick that so many paintings employ — It’s a rainy day in Paris. The street teems with umbrellas, hats and frock coats. On the right side of the image, a couple walks toward us. Meanwhile on the left the street opens out, giving us a view of modern Paris in the late 19th century. The question is…

How did Monet go from one to the other? —

A monumental painting that explores medieval fears of death and the afterlife — In the Italian city of Pisa there is a remarkable wall painting. Most people go to the famed city to see the “Leaning Tower”, but only a short distance away is one of the most beautiful cemeteries in all of the world, and inside this cemetery there is this painting. …

The exuberant and defiant self-portrait of Florine Stettheimer — The history of art is stocked full of female nudity. For centuries, male artists have depicted the female form, providing their patrons with up-close apparitions of unclothed women. To mitigate possible accusations of indecency, many nude portraits were painted in the guise of Classical figures. Venus was a popular subject…

What feminist art history can teach us about male genius — The title of this piece is deliberately provocative, of course. It comes from the seminal essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” written by the American art historian Linda Nochlin in 1971. What Nochlin asked the question why, if you look down the list of the most famous…

The digital gaze and social media — Social media has given us all access to a worldwide audience. It is a tempting situation. Many enterprising people now rely on social media to make their living through the delivery of personal content — with some rare individuals earning into the millions. How many of us, I wonder, have…

Indispensable guidance from Camille Corot — Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was one of the great French artists of the 19th century. Celebrated in his own time as a painter of large, nostalgic landscape works, it was his smaller outdoor studies that would command the attention of later artists. As Claude Monet wrote, “There is only one master here…

How art peels back the veneer of civilised routine — I have a print of this painting pinned onto my study wall. For a long time I’ve been trying to work out why I like it so much — and why I find myself coming back to it day after day. The painting is called Self-portrait with Red Scarf and…