Category Archives: Art

US-born princess vows to stay in Rome villa despite eviction order

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Saga continues over property housing Caravaggio’s only ceiling fresco as fifth auction fails to attract bids

A princess living in a villa in Rome that contains the only ceiling fresco ever painted by Caravaggio has said she would “vigorously defend” her right to stay in the sprawling property after a judge ordered her eviction.

The US-born Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, the only occupant of the 16th-century Villa Aurora, has been embroiled in a long-running inheritance dispute with the three sons of her late husband, Prince Nicolò Boncompagni Ludovisi, who was the property’s last owner.

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Impromptu takedown of painting in Netherlands ignites cancel culture row

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Controversial image of male Leiden University board members smoking cigars had long been topic of discussion

A spur-of-the-moment decision by academic staff to take down a 1970s painting depicting male Leiden University board members smoking cigars has sparked a debate in the Netherlands over cancel culture.

The artwork on the wall of a university meeting room had been a topic of discussion for years, with some students claiming that it both endorsed patriarchy and the act of smoking.

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Pope Francis orders Parthenon marbles held by Vatican be returned to Greece

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Three 2,500-year-old pieces will be ‘donated’ to Greece’s Archbishop Ieronymos II amid wider conversation about future of Parthenon marbles held by Britain

Pope Francis has decided to return to Greece three 2,500-year-old pieces of the Parthenon that have been in the papal collections of the Vatican Museums for two centuries.

The Vatican said in a brief statement that the pope was giving them to Archbishop Ieronymos II, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church and Greece’s spiritual leader, as a “donation” and “a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth”.

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Front room of prolific pub-scene painter recreated for Mayfair exhibition

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Eric Tucker, self-taught and virtually unknown until his death in 2018, has since been compared to LS Lowry

It is the cluttered front room of a Warrington council house: gas fire set into a tiled surround, glass-fronted cabinet housing treasured knick-knacks; shoes tucked under a chair; magazines and books piled up. And in the middle, an easel, surrounded by tubes of paint and jars of brushes.

The room is where Eric Tucker, an artist virtually unknown until his death in 2018 but since compared to LS Lowry, painted people in the pub and on the street, gossiping, reading, smoking, playing cards.

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Max Beckmann self-portrait breaks German art auction record with €20m sale

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Beckmann painted work in Amsterdam after fleeing Nazi Germany and shows him as younger man with enigmatic smile

A rare and remarkable self-portrait by the 20th-century German expressionist Max Beckmann has sold in Berlin for €20m (£17m), breaking the record for a work of art sold at auction in Germany.

The striking Selbstbildnis gelb-rosa (Self-portrait Yellow-Pink) was painted by Beckmann during his wartime exile in Amsterdam after he fled Nazi Germany. The identity of its new owner was not immediately available. With fees and other charges, the cost to the buyer was €23.2m.

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Indonesian group first Asian artists to top power list after ‘antisemitic’ mural

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The ruangrupa collective’s last show was removed from key German exhibition for caricatures of Jews

An Indonesian collective that became embroiled in an antisemitism row earlier this year has taken the No 1 spot in the annual ranking of the contemporary art world’s most influential people and organisations.

The ruangrupa group, founded in Jakarta in 2000, are the first artists from Asia to top the ArtReview Power 100. Their position “reflects the growing influence of the global south and the move towards greater diversity in the art world,” ArtReview said.

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Iranian artists call for boycott of cultural institutions with links to regime

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Art activism has increased in and outside the country since death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini

Dozens of Iranian artists have called for an international boycott of cultural institutions run by or affiliated with the Islamic Republic in protest against the regime’s worsening human rights abuses.

The call by artists, writers, film-makers and academics living in Iran and among its diaspora comes amid growing anti-government art activism by Iranians inside and outside the country after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.

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British Museum works to restore ‘rare and complex’ Michelangelo drawing

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16th-century work Epifania is one of only two existing cartoons by the Italian master

One of only two surviving Michelangelo cartoons is undergoing delicate and highly technical conservation work at the British Museum in an attempt to stabilise the fragile work for the coming decades.

Epifania, created by the Italian master artist around 1550, has degraded and been subject to repeated repairs over its almost 500-year history. Now it is laid out in the museum’s state-of-the-art conservation studios as specialists consider how best to preserve the complex structure and black chalk lines.

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Criticism mounts of ‘climate killer’ modern art museum in Berlin

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Calls for construction on Museum of the 20th Century to be halted until energy efficiency issues addressed

A vast modern art museum under construction in Berlin has been castigated by conservation experts and architecture critics for its poor environmental credentials, as the energy crisis intensifies scrutiny of the efficiency of new buildings.

The Museum of the 20th Century, designed by the Swiss star architects Herzog and de Meuron, is intended to propel the German capital into the top tier of world cities for modern art, competing with New York’s Moma and London’s Tate Modern.

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Bondi becomes nude beach as thousands take part in Spencer Tunick’s Sydney installation

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Legislation had to be changed to permit public nudity on the beach

For the first time in its history, Bondi has been declared a nude beach.

On Saturday, thousands of bodies huddled together in the early morning light to model in artist Spencer Tunick’s latest Australian installation – and his first in the name of skin cancer.

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Max Beckmann self-portrait poised to fetch record price at German auction

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Rarely seen work painted during artist’s Dutch exile from Nazi Germany has an estimate of €20m-€30m

A moody self-portrait of the 20th-century expressionist Max Beckmann painted during his Dutch exile from the Nazis is predicted to break the record for a price secured at auction in Germany when it goes under the hammer in Berlin next week.

Art lovers have been flocking first to New York and then to Berlin to see the painting in preview showings, which have offered a rare opportunity to view a masterpiece that has always been in private hands.

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‘I’m not humble’: Artist Ken Done delivers colourful speech as 2022 Australian fashion laureate

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The painter known for his vivacious Australiana prints accepted the award with a 10-minute speech that elicited laughter and some uncomfortable silences

Ken Done, the artist known for his riotously colourful Australiana paintings and prints, has been named the Australian fashion laureate for 2022. The lifetime achievement award honours individuals for their significant contribution to the Australian fashion industry.

“I’m not humble, fuck it,” Done said upon receiving the award at a ceremony in Sydney on Tuesday.

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Computer says there is a 80.58% probability painting is a real Renoir

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Swiss company uses algorithm to judge whether contested Portrait de femme (Gabrielle) is genuinely by French artist


Staring enigmatically at an unseen object to her right, the black-haired woman bears a striking resemblance to the person depicted in Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s painting Gabrielle, which Sotheby’s recently valued at between £100,000-150,000.

However, art connoisseurs disagree over whether the work, which is owned by a private Swiss collector, is the real deal. Now, artificial intelligence has waded in to help settle the dispute, and the computer has deemed that it probably is a genuine Renoir.

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John Constable’s favourite Hampstead pond to be restored after two centuries

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Branch Hill pond dried up in the 1880s. Now it will teem with wildlife again, as it did in the artist’s heyday

It was a view that John Constable sketched and painted dozens of times. From the top of Hampstead Heath, London’s highest point at 134 metres (440ft), the artist would look west and north towards today’s suburbs of Willesden, Edgware and Harrow. About 100 metres away, down below, was a beautiful natural pond.

But in the 1880s, Branch Hill pond dried up. Now, nearly two centuries after Constable immortalised on canvas his favourite landscape in the capital, the pond has been recreated.

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Brussels tries to cool locals’ anger over ‘racist’ street murals – with QR codes

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City authorities hope to soothe those who are ‘deeply shocked’ by the comic-strip trail of Belgium’s rich history

In the centre of Brussels, close to the monumental Palais de Justice, is a brightly coloured cartoon painted down a strip of a scruffy four-storey building. Playing on the stories of crime and judgment unfolding in the nearby courtrooms, the mural shows heaven and hell. In the blue skies, a caricatured police officer flies over a topless woman sunbathing, while a white officer eyes a black man; down below, the red-tailed devil looks grumpy.

The work, from a popular cartoon that first appeared in the 1980s, is just one of 68 murals celebrating Belgium’s rich history of comic strips, or bandes dessinées, including figures such as Tintin, Lucky Luke and the Smurfs.

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‘It’s as if we found oil’: Tuscan town savours discovery of spa trove

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San Casciano dei Bagni’s fortunes expected to change after opulent Etruscan-Roman sanctuary found

Since she was a child, Martina Canuti has been venturing down the steep hill flanking the Tuscan town of San Casciano dei Bagni, known by residents as “the sacred mountain”, to take a dip in the two ancient hot springs famed for their therapeutic benefits.

Little did she know that just a few metres away lay a sanctuary built by the Etruscans in the second century BC, containing a trove of treasures that could now reverse the fortunes of this relatively isolated town of 1,400 inhabitants near Siena.

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Digital Benin project reunites bronzes looted by British soldiers

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Comprehensive database of Benin bronzes held by museums raises questions about where they belong

Cheerfully gnashing their magnificent fangs as they stand side by side, the two bronze leopards look back on a journey that was as adventurous as it was cruelly absurd.

Looted by British soldiers on a punitive expedition to the west African kingdom of Benin in 1897, the bronzes were shipped to the UK, where they spent some time guarding the fireplace of army captain George William Neville’s Weybridge home. They were later put in display at Moma in New York and bought by a French art collector – who eventually sold them back to the colonial administration in Lagos in 1952 with a considerable mark-up.

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Microsoft co-founder’s collection poised to raise $1bn in ‘largest art auction in history’

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Proceeds from sale of 150 works owned by the late billionaire Paul Allen will go to charity

The vast private art collection of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is expected to fetch a record-breaking $1bn (£890m) when it is auctioned next week.

The collection of more than 150 masterpieces includes Georges Seurat’s Les Poseuses, Ensemble (petite version) and Paul Cézanne’s landscape La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, which are both expected to sell for more than $100m, and Gustav Klimt’s 1903 work Birch Forest, which has an auctioneer’s estimate of $90m.

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John Singer Sargent sketch to return to National Trust house where it was created

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Oil sketch of Elsie Palmer to go on display at Ightham Mote in Kent after being acquired by trust

An oil sketch by John Singer Sargent of one of his most famous models will be returned to the English country house where it was painted after being acquired by the National Trust.

Sargent’s sketch of Elsie Palmer, which was done in preparation for his masterpiece A Lady in White, will go on display at Ightham Mote in Kent, where the Palmer family lived and hosted artistic and literary gatherings for the likes of the actor Ellen Terry and the novelist Henry James in the late 1890s.

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Protesters who targeted Girl with a Pearl Earring jailed by Dutch court

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Two activists from Just Stop Oil Belgium each sentenced to two months in prison with one month suspended

Two Belgian climate change activists who last week targeted the Johannes Vermeer painting Girl with a Pearl Earring have been sentenced to two months in prison by a Dutch court, of which one month was suspended.

One activist glued his head to glass covering the painting at a museum in The Hague. The artwork was not damaged, gallery staff said.

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