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Very Rich Hours in Chantilly

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...
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Opening (and Reopening) in June

Here in England, you can visit a car showroom again from June 1, but if you're hoping to get out to see some art during the month, it looks like you'll need to be on the European mainland. Museums across the Netherlands are reopening at the start of June, and one exhibition we can thoroughly recommend is George Stubbs -- The Man, The Horse, The Obsession at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, which is being extended through to August 30. Find out how, in the 18th century, Stubbs was able to produce portraits of horses of unparalleled realism and get the chance to admire Whistlejacket , his most famous work and one of the jewels of London's National Gallery. We saw a bigger, broader version of this show last year at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes and loved it . Dutch museums will initially be operating at reduced capacity to allow for social distancing, and you need to book online tickets in advance to visit, specifying a timeslot for entry, though there's no need to we...
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Rembrandt -- The Story Starts Here

There have been a lot of Rembrandt exhibitions last year and in 2019, the 350th anniversary of his death, and we've felt a wee bit satiated, to be perfectly truthful.  The last big show in the Netherlands in this celebratory Rembrandt year is in Leiden, the city where the great artist was born in 1606, at the newly renovated and extended Museum De Lakenhal. It's about the start of his career, the period before Rembrandt really became Rembrandt. We approached it with a slight degree of trepidation; would this assembly of apprentice works actually constitute a decent exhibition?  We needn't have been concerned.  Young Rembrandt -- Rising Star  turns out to be the best Rembrandt show of all those we've seen recently, and in fact the best of the dozens of exhibitions we've been to around Europe this year. And if you can't get to Leiden, it'll be transferring to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in February.  This show takes us through to about 1634-35...
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Opening and Closing in November

There's a blockbuster of an exhibition about to open in London on November 2: Tutankhamun -- Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh at the Saatchi Gallery. Of more than 150 artefacts on show from the Egyptian king's tomb, unearthed almost a century ago, 60 are leaving Egypt for a first and final time on a world tour before they return to be displayed in a new Grand Egyptian Museum. The show's just been to Paris, where it drew almost 1.5 million visitors. It's on in London until May 3. Tickets are, as you might expect, not cheap. Five hundred years after the death of Leonardo da Vinci, the National Gallery is offering visitors an immersive exhibition designed to reveal the secrets of his painting The Virgin of the Rocks , taking you from inside the artist's mind (!) to how the picture might have looked in its original setting. Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece opens on November 9 and runs until January 12. We'll be expecting something a little less hi-tech from ...
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Non-Stop Rembrandt: 2019 Celebrates the Golden Age

You don't really need an excuse for a Rembrandt exhibition, but 2019 provides a perfect diary date: it's the 350th anniversary of his death, and some of the Netherlands' biggest galleries (and the Dutch tourism authorities) are celebrating with a year-long programme of events. Let's start at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where they have two big shows planned. The gallery, home to the Night Watch , has the world's biggest collection of Rembrandts, and from February 15 to June 10 it's planning to display 22 paintings, 60 drawings and the 300 best examples of his prints in All the Rembrandts of the Rijksmuseum . Towards the end of 2019, there's the mouth-watering prospect of a show comparing Rembrandt and his Spanish close contemporary Velazquez in what the Rijksmuseum says will be a comprehensive overview of paintings by the two great masters, with paintings hung in pairs. It's a collaboration with the Prado in Madrid, which is celebrating its 200th ...
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