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...
The mini skirt in the 60s, crinolines and corsets in the Victorian era, Tudor codpieces; fashion, clothing and how we dress has a lot to say about society, its values and the way people lived. In Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians at the Queen's Gallery in London, the curators give us an at times intimate insight into aspects of life under Georges I to IV, from 1714 to 1830. We also discover that fashion victims are nothing new, and who better to poke fun at those 18th-century foolish yet dedicated followers of fashion than the great Georgian caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson. Eagerly pursuing all the latest fads and trends, Rowlandson's somewhat portly gentleman is being manhandled by two tailors into a pair of the new tight-fitting soft-leather breeches that were all the rage among pleasure-seeking individuals in the mid-1780s. A contemporary account of the fitting process on the wall caption tells us that, like all the best satire, Rowlandson's was pretty close to...