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Articles on Art history

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A painting showing the Prophet Muhammad raising his hands in prayer while standing on the Mountain of Light in Mecca. Siyer-i Nebi (Biography of the Prophet), Istanbul, Ottoman lands, 1595-96. Topkapı Palace Library, Istanbul, H. 1222, fol. 158v. Photograph by Hadiye Cangökçe.

Islamic paintings of the Prophet Muhammad are an important piece of history – here’s why art historians teach them

An art historian describes the two historical representations of Prophet Muhammad that led to a controversy at Hamline University.
Remnants of polychrome colouring were scrubbed from recovered ancient Greek sculptures and artists created new all-white marble sculptures seen as continuous with an imagined past. (Shutterstock)

How whiteness was invented and fashioned in Britain’s colonial age of expansion

Western fashion, laundering and style reflected the racialized politics dramatically shaped by profound global transformations bound up with slavery, colonialism and modernization.
Tracker Nat, holding his hat on the far left, with Paul Hasluck standing next to him, holding Nat’s shield in this picture from 1958. National Archives of Australia. NAA: A1200, L28199.

Rediscovering the art of Tracker Nat: ‘the Namatjira of carving’

During the 1950s, Nat made hundreds of carvings. Today, many of these are likely to be lying unidentified in people’s homes and in museum basements.
‘Le Régime du corps’ described a variety of ways to maintain health by keeping the body in balance. The Bute Painter, circa 1285, MS Arsenal 2510, © Bibliothèque nationale de France

Medieval illustrated manuscripts reveal how upper-class women managed healthy households – overseeing everything from purging, leeching and cupping to picking the right wet nurse

This illustrated health manual dating back to the 13th century provides a glimpse of daily life in aristocratic households during the Middle Ages.
Jeffrey Smart, Margaret Olley in the Louvre Museum. 1994–95 Tuscany, Italy. Oil on canvas 67 x 110 cm Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Bequest of Ian Whalland 1997. 85.1997

On the elegance and wry observations of Jeffrey Smart, one of Australia’s favourite painters

Jeffrey Smart is admired for his carefully structured paintings of Tuscany and Rome. This National Gallery of Australia’s centenary celebration of his birth takes the viewer back to Adelaide.
Henri Matisse, Still life with green marble table (Nature morte à la table de marbre vert) 1941. Oil on canvas, 46 x 38.5 cm. Centre Pompidou, Paris, MNAM-CCI, purchased 1945 AM 2591 P. © Succession H Matisse/Copyright Agency 2021. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Philippe Migeat / Dist RMN-GP

Henri Matisse was an artist of colour and sensuous line; an unerring eye until the end

Matisse: Life & Spirit is a celebration of the creativity of the master of colour.
Art historians have long used traditional X-rays, X-ray fluorescence or infrared imaging to better understand artists’ techniques. Metropolitan Museum of Art/Wikimedia Commons

How AI is hijacking art history

Breathless headlines of artificial intelligence discovering or restoring lost works of art ignore the fact that these machines rarely, if ever, reveal one secret or solve a single mystery.

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