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...
There are lots and lots of new exhibitions starting in September right across Europe. The big offering on our radar in London is at the Wallace Collection in the shape of Frans Hals: The Male Portrait . The Wallace's own The Laughing Cavalier will be joined by over a dozen of the Dutch painter's works from galleries in Britain, Europe and the US in the first ever show to focus on Hals's depictions of solo male sitters. On from September 22 to January 30. One of the world's most recognisable artworks, The Great Wave , by Katsushika Hokusai, will of course be part of an exhibition of work by this Japanese artist and printmaker starting on September 30 at the British Museum, but for once it's not the focus. Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything , which is on until January 30, puts on display for the first time ever 103 drawings he made in the early 19th century for an encyclopedia that was never published. The works were recently acquired by the m...