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

Between a Constable resonating with Nature and a Castiglione blaring with turbulence, a picture by Algernon Newton captured the quietude of absolute stillness

The gargantuan, bewildering Louvre

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

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