The most sensual pictures of women sprang from Ovid’s verses, the Aeneid gave Turner his longest-lasting subject matter and Edward Burne-Jones saw himself in Arthur’s deathless slumber. Carla Passino explores how literature influenced art

Collecting fields often have holy grails, and in medieval illuminated manuscripts one is the Roman d’Alexandre or Romance of Alexander. The 20cm-tall book, written in Old French and illustrated with 1

A mosaic from the third or fourth century AD depicts gladiatorial combat. Rather than having slender, muscular bodies like modern athletes, these Roman fighters were lopsided and fat The gladiators of

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

Simone De Beauvoir The Image of HerTranslated by Lauren Elkin208pp, Penguin Vintage Classics, £14.99 The first reviews of Simone De Beauvoir’s novel Les Belles images (1966) were dismissive. Some crit

A soul-sucking, mind-messing black hole that women have been chucking themselves into since the dawn of time Social media feeds are full of mysterious pop-up videos of products that promise the earth