Art & Artists

Look closely at paintings and the people behind them. Explore artists, movements and the stories hidden in familiar and unexpected works of art.

A lover in a dark blue robe kissing a lady in a long cream gown patterned with small flowers, in a rose garden, with a red-winged angel playing an instrument above; watercolour by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Famous kisses in art: ten paintings of the first, the stolen and the last

A kiss through a window, across a supper table, at a train door and in a rose garden. Ten painted kisses, from Rossetti to Zorn.

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A man in a dark coat stands on a rocky peak with his back to the viewer, looking over a sea of fog and distant mountains.

30 famous paintings you can hang at home, room by room

Friedrich’s wanderer, Van Gogh’s irises, Renoir’s rowers, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Hokusai and Monet: thirty of the world’s best-known pictures, and the room each one suits.

Art & Artists

A queen in an ivory gown with long red-gold hair touching a sword to the shoulder of a kneeling knight in a red surcoat and mail, courtiers watching in a stone hall; painted by Edmund Blair Leighton.

Knights and ladies: ten paintings of medieval romance

Armour and veils, quests and farewells, enchantresses in the forest. The Victorians' dream of chivalric love, from Tristan to La Belle Dame sans Merci.

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Paolo embracing and kissing Francesca, who sits in a pale satin gown, in a dim room with a lectern and green curtain, while a man with a drawn sword approaches from the shadows; painted by Pierre Claude François Delorme.

Paolo and Francesca in four paintings: Dante's doomed lovers

One kiss over a book, one sword, one eternity in the wind. How four painters from 1820 to 1905 told the most famous love story in Dante's Inferno.

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Ruth in a pale headscarf and green dress holding sheaves of barley while Boaz, in a red robe, bends his head to hers in a golden field; painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Ten famous love stories in art, and the paintings that tell them

Paolo and Francesca, Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Abelard and Heloise. The great love stories of literature and legend, each told in a single painting.

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The Fable Editions Hieronymus Bosch book closed on a wooden table, its green cover showing The Garden of Earthly Delights open, beside a vase of white flowers and a pair of glasses.

The Hieronymus Bosch art book: one triptych, thirty-five pictures

A look inside Fable Editions' Bosch volume, which opens the Garden of Earthly Delights whole, maps it, then gives 35 of its details a page each.

Art & Artists

Hieronymus Bosch's Temptation of Saint Anthony triptych in Lisbon, open: flying fish and ships in the sky, a burning village, and the saint kneeling among demons at the centre; the whole triptych.

Bosch's Temptation of Saint Anthony: a fish boat, a heron ship and other wonders

Ships that are birds and a boat that is a fish. Five prints from Bosch's Lisbon triptych, and the story behind each.

Art & Artists

Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, open, with paradise, the garden of pleasures and hell side by side; the whole triptych.

Hieronymus Bosch prints: one painting, dozens of pictures

How Surrealium cut Bosch's triptychs into prints that hang on their own, and six to start with.

Art & Artists

Hieronymus Bosch's Haywain Triptych, open: paradise and the fall on the left wing, a great cart of hay surrounded by a scrambling crowd in the centre and hell on the right wing; the whole triptych.

The Haywain Triptych: what Bosch's cart of hay means

Everyone grabs at the hay while the cart rolls toward hell. Four prints from Bosch's Haywain and what each one shows.

Art & Artists