So the question to ask about the Michaelina Wautier exhibition at the Royal Academy in London must be: Is the hype about this recently rediscovered 17th-century woman painter justified? The answer: Yes, absolutely. She really does merit acknowledgement -- and not just because we recognise a woman working in a man's world. Her art shows she was extremely talented, producing superb canvases covering a diverse range of subject matter. What's more, she painted very large pictures featuring male nudes, such as Bacchus, despite her contemporaries thinking that was not the sort of thing a female artist could do. And her portraits are wonderfully lively and lifelike. This is Martino Martini, an Italian Jesuit missionary who travelled to China in the 1640s. It was painted in 1654, when Michaelina was around 40. Martini, who was staying at the Jesuit College in Brussels, is depicted wearing traditional Chinese silk court attire and a hat of fur and feathers. A rather substantial...
While we're sitting here in Britain waiting for any indications of an easing in the coronavirus lockdown that might allow museums and galleries to reopen, some countries on the European mainland are moving, albeit cautiously, towards letting the public back in. So yes, if you're in the right place, you may be able to get out to enjoy an exhibition in May. And that's important, because however much art you might be able to access online, it's never going to be the same as getting up close to the real thing. Austria and Germany look to be leading the way. In Vienna, there's a last chance at the Belvedere from May 15 to June 1 to catch Into the Night , a look at the role played by clubs and cabarets around the world in the story of modern art -- the antithesis of social distancing. Late 19th-century Paris, Harlem in the 1920s, Weimar-era Berlin: It's a great subject, and there's some fascinating art on show (especially Toulouse-Lautrec's almost abstract...