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...
Just before Christmas, we discovered Cyril Mann 's astonishing Solid Shadow Paintings at Piano Nobile in west London. So the chance to see the wider range of this forgotten British artist's work at The Lightbox in Woking -- an impressive venue we'd never visited before -- wasn't one we were going to pass up. Cyril Mann: Painter of Light and Shadow seeks to tell the story of a troubled artist who embraced a variety of styles during his career. Born in London in 1911, Mann grew up in Nottingham and became the youngest ever recipient of a scholarship to the Nottingham School of Art at the age of 12. He spent time in Canada before returning to study at the Royal Academy and then went to Paris to train under the Scottish Colourist JD Fergusson, painter of that bacchanalian extravaganza Les eus . Mann was always interested in the effects of sunlight and shadow, and among the exhibits in this show is a notebook from 1937 recording his observations. The shadow side of the...