Hans Memling was one of the most important, prolific and versatile painters active in 15th-century Bruges, and one of the leading artists of the Early Netherlandish School. Commissioned by Abbot Jan Crabbe, one of Memling's most signifcant and erudit...

There was a time when museums might have been regarded as rather forbidding and austere centres of learning, but today they are more likely to position themselves firmly within the tourism and leisure industry with all manner of food, fun and family...

A Dutch Italianate, Adriaen Van de Velde represents a point of artistic crosscommunication across borders, fusing agricultural landscapes in Holland with mythological Arcadian scenes in Italian settings. He died at the early age of 35, and yet he pro...

When English naturalist Joseph Banks (1743-1820) accompanied Captain James Cook (1728-1779) on his historic mission into the Pacific, the Endeavour voyage of 1768-1771, he took with him a team of collectors and illustrators. Banks and his team return...

One of the most distinctive features of Islamic design is the evolution of an increasingly abstract and repetitive repertoire of motifs, which are shared among all media – metalwork, woodwork, ceramics, tilework and textiles. In textiles the main the...

In 1882 the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett (Prints and Drawings Museum) acquired, from the collection of the Duke of Hamilton, Sandro Botticelli's spectacular series of drawings on parchment illustrating scenes from Dante's "Divine Comedy". It also acqui...

Accompanying a major exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, this catalogue explores a remarkable and unprecedented series of paintings by Peter Lanyon (1918-1964), one of Britain's most important and original post-War artists. Lanyon sought to create...

Anyone writing about a work of art needs to establish at the outset how much it has changed since it was first made. This simple, informative and pracrical book, full of fascinating and revelatory photography, will take the reader through both the te...

The first Europeans to follow the explorers of the eighteenth century into the South Pacific were missionaries. They were sent by an Evangelical Christian organization called The London Missionary Society, whose aim was to bring the word of the Bible...