This is a painting which combines a tight, even claustrophobia-inducing built environment with wondrous heavenly remoteness. The juxtaposition of these differing spatial conceptions is oddly disturbing. The viewer is placed at ground level with a view up to the dizzying heights of the building on the right, the Virgin Mary’s home, with its overhanging parapet and revealing its ornately painted ceiling on the upper floor, heights which are usually considered great for mere mor

Having just completed an article, published elsewhere, on a Max Beckmann painting whose theme was an allegorical vision of a journey, and following the critical discourse that accompanied the recent release of the Christopher Nolan-directed film The Odyssey, an adaptation of Homer’s classic about an archetypal epic expedition, our minds were swirling with what journeys mean to us. So, it was maybe not surprising that we felt prompted to take one more look at another depiction

Raphael, Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, 1514-15, oil on canvas, Louvre Museum, Paris The sitter for this portrait, Baldassare Castiglione, was not only a diplomat, polymath and humanist but he was also a friend of the artist. They shared a philosophy, an outlook on their respective writerly and artistic practices that was given expression through their work. Castiglione became famous for his book, Il Cortegiano, a highly influential manual in the form of a series of dial

J.M.W.Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th October 1834, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art This is one of two depictions in oil of the same event that Turner painted – the other is in The Cleveland Museum of Art – but I have chosen this one, now housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to write about. Both are great works, but I prefer this version for the sense of immediacy in its composition. It is a painting of high drama and elemental ener

We both really enjoyed the Francisco de Zurbarán exhibition which we saw together at The National Gallery in London this summer (it will move on to Paris later in the year and Chicago early next year). Its organisers deserve recognition for what is a really well-focused representation of the artist’s oeuvre with just over forty works on display, including a few by his son Juan, so unlike some of the worthy but overwhelming and exhausting blockbuster shows dedicated to other a