From George Stubbs’s golden vision of the labourer’s place in society to Ford Madox Brown’s heroically monumental celebration of manual labour, artists gave individual interpretations of work, as Michael Hall reveals

Last April, a surprising photograph (see near right) appeared on the Wikipedia page devoted to Jeanne Duval, the long-term mistress of Charles Baudelaire and the “Black Venus” who inspired some of the

“Johannes Vermeer is the most laconic of the Dutch old masters,” Andrew Graham-Dixon once remarked, adding that this “may explain why he has been the cause of so much volubility in others”. A quarter

A pair of comfortable Gonse chairs brought last year’s sales to a splendid end, with Old Master drawings set to star at auctions and fairs early in 2026

Philippe Ariès Pages RessuscitéesEdited by Guillaume Gros240pp. Cerf Éditions. €24. Given that Philippe Ariès wrote about man’s relation with his own mortality, it is piquant that the historian has be

This column is condensed from a stiffer academic one (Byzantion 51, 1981, pp8-21) intended to amplify and correct a paper on the same subject by Constance Head (Byzantion 50, 1980, pp336-40). Alongsid