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...
Those government-designated hotbeds of coronavirus infection that are England's public museums are due to open again on May 17, and all those exhibitions that have been stuck behind closed doors for months now will suddenly be able to welcome the public. So there's a lot of new shows to get through this month.... When the first lockdowns hit Europe last year, David Hockney was at his home in Normandy, and he spent three months recording in drawings on his iPad how nature in his immediate surroundings evolved day by day. The results can be seen at London's Royal Academy from May 23 to September 26 in David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 , which features 116 works. You'll be familiar with Hockney's iPad drawings if you saw A Bigger Picture , the exhibition of his landscapes at the RA in 2012 (astonishing to think it was that long ago). The Normandy show goes on to Bozar in Brussels in October. Tate Modern also has a French theme, with the start on Ma...