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...
Who were the first great English painters? The answer surely has to be Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver. They may have worked on a small, even minuscule, scale, but in the late Tudor and early Stuart periods, Hilliard and Oliver were artistic giants. Their story is told in Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard & Oliver , an exquisite, rewarding and eye-opening exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery. Portrait miniatures were big in England and in France in the late 16th century: popular with royals and the aristocracy, and with the emerging middle classes too. This wasn't so much art for public display as to express a personal relationship, perhaps indicating the recipient was in the monarch's favour, or worn to demonstrate loyalty. Or to show burning passion: This Unknown Man Against a Background of Flames , painted by Hilliard in about 1600, presumably intended this picture as a keepsake for his beloved to express his undying devotion. He...