From gleaming presents to inebriating parties, discover five artists’ interpretations of the festive season

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

With Hallowe’en out of the way, Christmas is the next big ghostly occasion in the UK traditional calendar. But what, one may wonder, of the rest of Europe? Ghost hunter Peter Underwood called Europe “

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

The search for the mythical relic unites the two strongest currents of European spirituality: Christianity and the legends of Arthur and his knights

JOHANN KERNER saw the woman coming out of the darkness. She looked ancient and she moved as slowly as a snail, her back bent. She was the most likely source of information he had seen on his travels.