It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience: the chance to see one of the greatest -- and most fragile -- works of European art before your very eyes. The illustrated manuscript known as the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry contains images that have shaped our view of the late Middle Ages, but it's normally kept under lock and key at the Château de Chantilly, north of Paris. It's only been exhibited twice in the past century. Now newly restored, the glowing pages of Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry are on show to the public for just a few months. "Approche, approche," the Duke of Berry's usher tells the visitors to the great man's table for the feast that will mark the start of the New Year. It's also your invitation to examine closely the illustration for January, one of the 12 months from the calendar in this Book of Hours -- a collection of prayers and other religious texts -- that form the centrepiece of this exhibition in Chantilly. It's su...
You have to suffer for your art. At least, you do when you go to see Leonardo da Vinci at the Louvre in Paris, possibly the most hyped exhibition of the year. But by no means the best. There's some astonishing art in this show, of course there is. How could there not be? Superb drawings, beautiful paintings like La Belle Ferronnière . But, oh, the crush. We've been to crowded blockbuster shows in the past, but this was like a pre-Christmas Saturday shopping on Oxford Street. Quite a lot of it is really badly laid out. And this is not the definitive Leonardo retrospective that the curators were aiming for in this 500th anniversary year of his death. You won't, for example, see the Lady with an Ermine from Krakow, which was in the National Gallery Leonardo exhibition in London eight years ago. Now, the Louvre may have just about the most fantastic array of art anywhere, but your visit can be almost as stress-inducing as a peak summer departure from Gatwick. It...