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Titian returned to this subject many times, sometimes at the behest of patrons but also because the figure of the weeping woman, remorseful of her sinfulness, enabled him to depict a combination of religious piety, Mary’s new-found faith and devotion, and at the same time to indulge his clients’, and maybe his own, taste for sensuality under the convenient guise of virtue and sanctity. Titian, Penitent Magdalene , c.1561-65, oil on canvas, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg W

There is a danger in choosing this work by Morisot to write about, of reinforcing some of the early prejudices that her work provoked, those slights which emphasized her paintings’ femininity, their sentiment and a certain nebulousness to the brushwork. Some critics dismissed her as a mere dilettante, a relatively privileged bourgeoise  who, as a woman, couldn’t be seriously compared to male artists, especially since there is a clear tendresse that imbued much of her work -

Edgar Degas, Women on a Terrace Café in the Evening , 1877, pastel on paper, Musée d'Orsay, Paris Degas’s depictions of the reality of modern life were a far cry from the Salon-approved works of the period which presented viewers with grand historical or mythological subjects, formally and traditionally posed. Such academic paintings were characterised by scale and high levels of finish and detailing - the works of Ingres, whose greatest achievements had been executed earlier

In 1887, the great novelist Henry James wrote about his friend and fellow American expatriate the artist John Singer Sargent, in Harper’s Magazine: In an altogether exceptional degree does he gives us the sense that an intention and the art of carrying it out are for him one and the same thing…   that perception with him is already by itself a kind of execution…. I mean the quality in the light of which the artist sees deep into his subject, undergoes it, absorbs it, discover

Fra Angelico, San Marco Altarpiece  (1438-43), tempera on wood, San Marco Museum, Florence Among the most vivid recollections of my early Catholic School education are of the macabre stories told to us by our nun-teachers about martyrs. Each year’s classroom was dedicated to a particular saint whose statue was displayed there as a way to focus our attention on their lives lived in the faith. Not all were martyrs of course (St Francis’ story was equally compelling and the othe

Like many of James Ensor’s paintings featuring skulls or skeletons, this one is an odd combination of the macabre and the joyful. The palette is bright, fresh, and the room depicted seems enticingly sunny. But the artist is represented as dead (or at least a zombie-like member of the living dead) and skulls other than his own are also strewn around the room. One sits on the floor at bottom left in profile, with what looks like a puncture mark or bullet hole visible on it. Ano

Of the five treatments of the Judith and Holofernes story depicted by Artemisia Gentileschi, I have deliberately singled out this one to write about, the one which hangs in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. I think it her best for the way it captures the compassionate complicity and sisterhood existing between heroine and servant, a bond which transcends anything to do with class or rank. The two figures stand close together and in front of one another shown in three-quarter len

Gustave Caillebotte, Dans un café  (1880), oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen (on loan from the Musée d'Orsay, Paris). A slightly doughy-faced and rumpled man stands with hands in pockets, his collar loose at the neck and with his back to a large gilt-framed mirror. He is loitering in an upscale Parisian café. His bowler hat identifies him as standing socially a rung below the upper bourgeois classes that continued to sport the black silk top hat, the chapeau haut-d

Petrus Christus, Portrait of a Young Girl  (1465-70), oil on oak wood, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin The squint, or more correctly the strabismus of the subject in this painting is a little disconcerting. Her apparent look back at the viewer combined with a simultaneous look to the side, feels like she enjoys a wider comprehension of the world, as if in possession of some kind of quiet superpower. Known medically as exotropia (where one eye is directed outwards), the condition is re

The French dealer and restless champion of post-modern art Ambroise Vollard suggested that Derain visit London in 1906 following Monet’s earlier and successful example at the turn of the century, and this painting is one of a series of Fauvist views of the city’s river and skyline produced as a result. It’s a particular favourite of mine, partly because it depicts London, and a specific part of it that I know well and so I feel a personal connection to it because of the sense

I was recently enjoying reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow  by Gabrielle Zevin  when I came across a reference to this artwork. The novel is set in the 1990s world of pioneering computer game design and manages to appeal even to non-gamers like me, largely because it paints such a compelling picture of the central characters’ personalities, their brilliant minds, their motivations, their loves and losses and ultimately their more important friendships. It helps of cou

Giorgione, The Adoration of the Shepherds , c. 1505, oil on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Advent approaches (it’s the advent of advent) as I write this piece, so thoughts inevitably turn to Christmas and the subject of The Nativity. The barrage of ‘seasonally themed’ product advertising that we all endure at this time of year is the kind of onslaught which can easily distract us from the significance of Christ’s birth, even for non-practising Christians. The

Chaïm Soutine, View of Cagnes  (c.1924), oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York There is a phantasmagorical quality to this landscape that is both kookily enchanting and at the same time unsettling. It shows houses perched on a hillside which writhe away from the viewer as if our perception of their solidity and durability has become unfixed and their physical integrity suddenly called into question. There is an echo in it of the swirling psychic intensity of Mun

Hans Holbein the Younger, The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb , 1521, oil on wood, Kunstmuseum, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel Holbein obliges viewers of this painting to confront the graphically shocking reality of death. It shows the body of the recently tortured and crucified Christ now interred, seemingly many days after expiration if we are to judge by its discolouration. Despite the fact that the corpse clearly no longer breathes, the narrow confines of the casket

Ferdinand Hodler, The Kien Valley with the Bluemlisalp Massif , 1902, oil on canvas, The National Gallery, London My first thought on looking at a photo of this painting was that its aspect ratio felt out of kilter, like the reverse of those changes that you sometimes see on a TV set-up when old film or TV shows are made to fit the modern screen size. But this landscape seems, after a proper look at it in the flesh at The National Gallery, to glory in its ‘aspect’; its portra

George Dunlop Leslie, Alice in Wonderland  (c. 1879), oil on canvas, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery The title of this painting tells us both the name of the book being read aloud and also the place to which the mind of the little girl listening has travelled. It shows the artist’s wife Lydia, and their daughter Alice, who seems lost in the world of her own wonderment. Her receptive imagination is represented by the blankness of the wall behind, a space demarcated by the hori

Cy Twombly – Leda and the Swan (1962), oil, lead pencil and wax crayon on canvas,   MOMA, Museum of Modern Art in New York In the original Greek legend of this work’s title, the beautiful Leda,  wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta, was impregnated by Zeus who had disguised himself as a swan in order to captivate her. Leda went on to give birth to two sets of twins, including both Helen and Clytemnestra, women who would figure so tragically in the inception and unfolding of the T

Willaim Nicholson, The Lustre Bowl with Green Peas  (1911), oil on canvas, National Galleries of Scotland This work was painted in 1911...

Andrew Wyeth – Wind from the Sea  (1947), tempera on masonite, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC Andrew Wyeth, Christina’s World ,...

The figure of Jesus in this painting has always seemed to me to be oddly pudgy and feminised, even though he also appears suitably...