Whether it’s a rosy-cheeked girl wrapped up warm, sun-bathed sheep at twilight or a snow-blanketed apple orchard, myriad pictures sum up the festive season, as 16 friends of COUNTRY LIFE tell Carla Passino

Johannes Vermeer brightened his native Delft with luminous pictures of women caught in intimate moments, but the serenity of his work, of which he produced remarkably little, is at odds with a life mired in debt, as Carla Passino discovers

The search for still-life subjects led the artist Kate Friend to some of the greatest gardens and gardeners in the country, discovers Tiffany Daneff

Alexander Marshal–this country’s first major botanical painter–deserves to be better known, writes Tiffany Daneff, after seeing his luminous originals in the Royal Collection

Andrew Graham-Dixon tells Carla Passino why he thinks we have read Vermeer wrong all along– and who the Girl with a Pearl Earring really is

I absolutely love this painting; it is so intriguing and there is so much to look at. Apart from the quality of the painting itself and the awe-inspiring brushwork, the subject matter and intensity of