Though only 30 km separated Frans Hals and Rembrandt van Rijn – who worked in Haarlem and Amsterdam respectively – there’s no record of the 17th-century masters ever meeting. Their work, however, ...

Long after David Sassoon’s descendants had entered the highest echelons of English society, their collecting reflected the family’s ties to the Middle East, India and China As Nahson and Da Costa ...

In 1781, the sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736–83) cut a strange figure. A decade before, he had been an artist at the heart of Viennese high society. Poised to become professor of sculpture at ...

We have all become suddenly more aware of the moments when we cannot avoid touching elements of public buildings. Architecture is the most physical, most imposing and most present of the arts – you ...

Success and fame, if they come to an artist at all, usually arrive by one of two routes. Either their work suddenly captures the moment, chiming with current cultural trends or concepts; or else an ...

From the September 2026 issue of Apollo. Less than a quarter of the way into the Bayeux Tapestry, a small, puzzling scene interrupts the course of events. At this point, we are still in the long ...

From the April 2021 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. In the summer of 1936, when Salvador Dalí gave his famous lecture at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London, delivered ...

From the October 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. Giovanni Antonio Canal’s paintings are immediately recognisable but rarely set pulses racing. That changed this summer, when a ...

From the September 2024 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. The view directly ahead of me is classically, achingly picturesque: Vesuvius as backdrop, its distinctive outline purple-blue ...

Could the art-finance industry offer museums some much-needed options? The industry is currently geared to private individuals, but perhaps museums should consider it, too Timothy Hunter 22 August ...

In 1972 the British Museum’s display of 50 objects from the tomb of King Tutankhamun attracted 1.6 million visitors, and became the paradigm for the blockbuster exhibition as an unmissable, ...

From the November 2021 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. In 1939, the psychiatrist Walter Maclay found eight coloured drawings in a Notting Hill junk shop. They all show cats. A sepia tabby ...