Sirens vs mermaids: the myth, the difference and what they mean
Where sirens came from, how they grew fish tails, what Odysseus did about them, and why the French still use one word for both.
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 museum walk after hours: Masterworks by lantern light
A lantern, four rooms and a wall drawn to scale. How to walk our collection one story at a time, from Saint George to the myths of Le Temple des Muses.
Sirens and sea monsters: the great paintings of the deep
Songs that wreck ships, mermaids on the rocks and the creatures sailors swore they saw, from Homer to Kuniyoshi.
St George and the Dragon: the story and what it means
The legend told in full, the real soldier who inspired it, what the dragon stands for, and why England, Catalonia, Georgia and Moscow all call him their own.
Saint George and the Dragon: fifteen paintings, seventeen hundred years
From a Roman soldier's tomb to the Pre-Raphaelites, the story of the most painted fight in Western art, told through fifteen masterworks you can hang at home.
4 Baroque masterpieces: the warmth of Rubens, the presence of Velázquez
From an arresting gaze to a sweeping allegory, four works reveal how much a body, a gesture and a little light can say.
4 Arnold Böcklin paintings for a beautifully strange room
A ruined shore, a listening painter, sea creatures and a solitary musician. Four moods from Böcklin’s imaginative world.
4 Gustave Moreau paintings: myths in jewel-like colour
Unicorns, heroes and radiant encounters. Four richly imagined worlds from the Fable collection, made for looking closely.
4 William Blake works for a world beyond the ordinary
A dragon, a fallen king, a midnight creature and a luminous rescue. Enter Blake’s imagination through four extraordinary images.