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...
They left their troubled homeland to seek a new life in the North, refugees fleeing poverty, war and religious persecution. But unlike many modern asylum-seekers, they didn't actually travel that far, just from Flanders to Holland. And they spoke the same language, more or less. Their destination was Haarlem, and the thousands who arrived there from the Spanish-ruled southern Netherlands in the late 16th and early 17th centuries would change the face of the city, its art and architecture for ever. They included its most famous painter, and their legacy is highlighted in an exhibition called Newcomers at the art gallery that bears his name, the Frans Hals Museum. Not surprisingly, it's Hals himself who is the star turn in this exhibition that provides an intriguing lesson in art history and Dutch history. There are nine of his paintings on show here, seven of them loaned from elsewhere. This one -- Two Fisherboys -- is a picture that really makes an im...