Alasdair Palmer talks to the French artist who has discovered the secret of the Master’s technique How did he do it? Among the many great unanswered questions about Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’, that has long been one of the most puzzling. Part of the perennial appeal of the ‘Mona Lisa’, and one reason why, today,
In 1435 a young Tuscan poet and diplomat visited the court of James I in Edinburgh. The purpose of his mission remains something of a mystery. But he was impressed by the women of the country, whom he described as ‘fair, charming and easily won’. It also did not take him long to discover that
James Pryde (1866–1941) is one of those artists who enjoyed a considerable vogue in their own lifetime, and resurface now and again but never with anything like the same success. (The last solo show of his work I saw was at the Redfern in 1988. There was a museum show in Edinburgh, his native city,
The ancient tradition of arts patronage is being revived in Marbella, the Andalusian playground of the rich and famous. Here in the shadow of the Sierra Blanca mountains, next to the luxurious Marbella Club, built by Prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe in the 1950s, The New World Trust, organisers of the Marbella Film Festival and the
There are, as we all know, many disadvantages to going away on holiday, not least the fact — so ably nailed by Alain de Botton — that we are forced to take ourselves with us. How relaxing it would be to leave home without one’s own deficiencies and inability to enjoy oneself when doing nothing.
The programme gets it right in rating Henry VIII ‘at the edge of William Shakespeare’s drama and theatre’. It’s from the very end of his working life, co-written with John Fletcher, and is but seldom given. This, as became abundantly apparent in AandBC’s production for the RSC’s Complete Works, is because it’s a dry biscuit,
