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.
An art historian describes the two historical representations of Prophet Muhammad that led to a controversy at Hamline University.
Else Blankenhorn, ALLEGORY WITH IMPERIAL COUPLE, before 1920, oil on canvas, Inv. 4305
© Prinzhorn Collection, Heidelberg University Hospital
Despite her extensive and versatile oeuvre, Blankenhorn has received limited attention from the art world.
In a new land, the ancient past held special meaning.
'Temple of Aphaea, Aegina' by John Rollin Tilton. Courtesy of Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Americans of all stripes have long embraced the culture of the ancient Mediterranean, using ancient ideals to navigate a new world.
Just Stop Oil via AP
In 1914, suffragette Mary Richardson slashed a painting London’s National Gallery to attract publicity to Emmeline Pankhurst’s imprisonment.
Sue O'Connor
This artwork tells the incredible story of the Indigenous Traditional Owners who have long called the Tanami home.
Judith Slaying Holofernes.
Artemisia Gentileschi
Katy Hessel’s ambitious, weighty corrective to an art history canon that sidelines (or erases) women is ‘impressive and overdue’, writes Edwina Preston.
Although pregnancy was celebrated in Renaissance paintings, like the ‘Primavera’ by Botticelli, the reality was quite different. Will Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government reverse abortion rights in Italy?
Uffizi Gallery
The baby drop box is a revival of centuries-old cultural practices from the Italian Renaissance when reproductive rights were zero.
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)
Western fashion, laundering and style reflected the racialized politics dramatically shaped by profound global transformations bound up with slavery, colonialism and modernization.
The Lee Krasner exhibition at London’s Barbican, 2019.
Charlie J Ercilla / Alamy
There is still much to do to overcome the damage done by the myth of women-free art history that existed for the entire 20th century.
Paul Klee (1879–1940), Hammamet with Its Mosque, 1914.
Metropolitan Museum of Art/Wikimedia Commons
Hammamet with Its Mosque, a little picture with a monumental impact, belies a complex history of cross-cultural encounter.
Ethel Spowers, School is out, 1936, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, purchased 1976.
Their modernist interpretations of Australia in the interwar period have both a complexity and a simplicity.
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.
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.
Raemar, Blue, 1969, Tate: Presented by the Tate Americas Foundation, partial purchase and partial gift of Doris J. Lockhart 2013.
© James Turrell. Photo: Chen Hao
From J.M.W. Turner to Yayoi Kusama, this exhibition explores 200 years of art about light.
The Blue Room by Suzanne Valadon, an important post-impressionist artist.
Wikimedia
The National Gallery’s reliance on outdated, male-dominated art history is a failure of its duty as a steward of the British public’s art collection
Elioth Gruner (1882–1939), Spring Frost, 1919. Oil on canvas.
Art Gallery of New South Wales
In 1895 the Wynne Prize was proposed as an award for a ‘landscape painting of Australian scenery’. Today it is more likely to be given to an Indigenous artist’s explanation of Country.
HappyWaldo/Wikimedia Commons
It has been tradition for soldiers to have a drink with Chloé at the Young and Jackson Hotel since the first world war.
‘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
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
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
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
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.