This week's exhibition
Versailles: science and splendor
The Sun King's palace was the birthplace of the modern world, says this blockbuster.
Science Museum, London, 12 December – 21 April
Also showing now
Everest revisited
Everest's haunting images and stories mark the 100th anniversary of Mallory and Irvin's disappearance during their fateful summit attempt.
Legged, Penrith, until February 23rd
History of Japanese art Takashi Murakami
This work is a cheeky and pop arrangement of Japanese art classics. Hokusai is spinning around in his grave.
Gagosian Grosvenor Hill, London, 10 December – 8 March
From Dürer to Van Dyck
Drawings from the Devonshire Collection, focusing on Scandinavian artists from the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, until 23 February
traumatic surreality
The great Swiss surrealist Meret Oppenheim is also one of the German-speaking women featured in the show.
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, until 16 March
This week's image
Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images
At Jasleen Kaul's Turner Prize show, music blares from a Ford Escort wrapped in a giant doily. Our critic confessed that he wanted her to win the award from the first time he saw or heard it. Read his full review
what we learned
Romantic genius Caspar David Friedrich's major show to open in New York in 2025
Artists around the world express concerns about Trump's second presidential inauguration
Parmigianino's Vision of St. Jerome is a masterpiece of wild religion
Queensland's Asia Pacific Triennial is an explosion of color and optimism
Rediscovered Elizabethan portrait may have been a token of love for Sir Walter Raleigh
Fascinating new show traces love affair between art and technology back to 1950
Shockingly turbulent times brought innovation to India's artists and activists
Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla's lost masterpiece will be re-exhibited for the first time in 134 years
This week's masterpiece
Coronation of the Virgin, 1407-09, by Lorenzo Monaco
This Gothic landscape, painted in the early 1400s for Florence's Abbey of San Benedetto Fuori della Porta Pinti, makes it hard to believe that an artistic revolution was about to take place in Florence. Lorenzo Monaco adheres to the style created by Giotto a century ago. His Virgin Mary, placed under a realistic canopy, is individual and human, yet abstract in all, as she leans modestly forward to be crowned above a gathering of angels. There is also formality. Other celestial hosts are depicted on a number of side panels on either side of this central scene, all of which can be seen in the National Gallery's new Medieval Room. The feeling Monaco aspires to is simple, humble and reverent. Everyone will share his piety. Soon, Florentine artists began experimenting with new ideas about perspective and classical proportions that made art more complex and rich, but still less accessible to the public.
National Gallery, London
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