The White Cliffs of Dover, Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters, the Needles and Durdle Door -- the southern English coastline has plenty of spectacular chalk and limestone features, but just across the Channel the French have got something equally if not more stunning: the chalk cliffs at Etretat. Surrounding the bay of what was once a small fishing village, three natural arches and a 70-metre freestanding needle of chalk are a breathtaking sight (we were there a couple of years ago), and they're now a huge tourist attraction. But even before the tourists got there, some of the most famous names in French art had discovered a motif of which they rarely tired; as Normandy Tourism puts it: "Nature has carved unusual shapes out of the white cliffs in Etretat, and as a result, this picturesque spot attracted many Impressionist painters, who sought to capture the cliffs on canvas." Etretat, Beyond the Cliffs: Courbet, Monet, Matisse is devoted to those depictions of the white...
The big new show in London this month is Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance at the Victoria & Albert Museum, starting on February 11. Donatello created a revolution in sculpture in 15th-century Florence, and this show, with some 130 objects, includes much work that has never been seen in the UK before. It's the last in a series of interlinked exhibitions following shows in Florence and Berlin that were highly praised. On until June 11. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford takes us to ancient Crete beginning on February 10 for Labyrinth: Knossos, Myth & Reality . The palace of Knossos was the centre of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization, and legend had it that an enormous labyrinth was built there to hold the Minotaur, a creature half-man, half-bull. This exhibition includes more than 100 objects that have never left Greece before as well as two immersive experiences. It runs until July 30. Curiously, the new show at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is also about the a...