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