Hestia, goddess of the hearth

Cultural Crusader

The Graces, dancing in a circle, nude or veiled in diaphanous gowns, celebrated ideal beauty, but were also the touchstone in the battle for supremacy between painting and sculpture, as Michael Prodger reveals

AFRICAN FOLKLORE

Whether vestiges of paganism survived Europe’s Christianisation is a subject of enduring fascination. Scholarly debate navigates between the ‘maximalist’ position (much survived) and the ‘minimalist’

How Old Norse mythology endured in the Christian era

Earlier in the summer, antiquity sales highlighted the many depictions of the classical world’s most popular hero, including a version with Byronic hair, as well as the extraordinary sculpting and casting progress made by ancient Greece