Art
Tokyo National Museum: The Honest Review Nobody Will Give You (Rating 6/10)
I came home from Tokyo the first time nursing one intolerable gap: I hadn't seen the National Museum. So I went back,...
Art
The Borghese Gallery: a complete guide. What to see, what can fairly be criticised, and why the building is worth as much as the art
Twenty rooms, the highest concentration of Bernini sculpture in the world, six Caravaggios and a building that counts as one of the...
Art
The Vatican Museums: The Museum You Never Finish. An Honest, Work-by-Work Guide to a Week That Isn’t Enough
Six million visitors a year march through the Vatican Museums towards the Sistine Chapel and miss almost everything else. Here is an...
Art
Pontormo Rome Exhibition: Play Pontormo’s Pantone Guessing Game®
The Pontormo Rome exhibition opens in October. Here is a better use of the wait than counting down days: thirteen of his...
Art
THE RANT: Audio Guides, God I hate them.
Audio guides: secondhand information for people who'd rather press play than open a book. A love letter to art disguised as a...
Art
Michelangelo Buonarroti, the total artist (and his real torments)
Not the schoolbook saint, not the fridge magnet logo. A long, honest guide to Michelangelo from Florence 1475 to Rome 1564: sculpture,...
Art
Visiting the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence: Beyond Michelangelo’s David
To most visitors the Accademia is the David museum, and they devote ninety percent of their time to a single statue. That...
Art
Michelangelo’s Prigioni at the Galleria dell’Accademia: The Unfinished Slaves of an Impossible Tomb
Ninety-five per cent of visitors accelerate past the four half-carved giants to photograph the David, treating them as the appetiser before the...
Art
The David by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Borghese Gallery, Rome): the moment before, frozen in marble
Stand before Bernini's David at the Borghese Gallery and see how a 23-year-old redefined sculpture, capturing the split second before the stone...
Travel
Saint Savior in Chora, the best mosaics in Istanbul
Step inside Saint Savior in Chora, Istanbul's hidden Byzantine gem, and explore the most breathtaking medieval mosaics you've likely never heard of.