A major event at the Louvre: powerful canvases by the greatest Venetian painters of the sixteenth century are presented side by side in Napoleon Hall in an exhibition allowing visitors to observe the play of inspiration and admiration between these geniuses as well as the competitive nature of their artistic dialogue. Including eighty-five canvases, most of which have been loaned for the occasion by prestigious museums worldwide, the exhibition brings this noble rivalry into focus through juxtapositions of paintings treating the same or equivalent themes, thus demonstrating just how much these artists were influenced by one another or instead used their paintings as critiques or to put forward their own personal interpretations. Although Titian, named official painter to the Republic in 1516, dominated the Venetian art scene, the arrival of later generations—Bassano, Tintoretto, Veronese, Palma the Younger—and the influence of artistic developments in central Italy, resulted in novel...

A painting that supposedly was made by Hans van Meegeren, one of the most notable forgers of all time, dates, from the XVII Century and might have even hung in Johannes Vermeer's house, according to the Art Newspaper.

The painting is titled “The Procuress” and is housed at the Courtauld Institute in London, which accepted it in 1960 as a donation from Professor Geoffrey Webb, a specialist in historic architecture.

Webb, who worked in Germany after World War II, had received it as a gift for his help in the returning of works of art to rightful owners.

He believed that it was a forgery made by Van Meegeren (1889-1947) which Dutch authorities had recovered after the War in a chalet that Van Meegeren had in Nice, Cote d'Azur (South of France).

The painting was loaned to three forgery exhibitions as an example of an excellent artistic forgery...

LONDON (AP) — Lucy Vodden, who provided the inspiration for the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” has died in London. She was 46.

Her death, after a history of lupus, was announced Monday by St. Thomas’s Hospital in London, where she had been treated for more than five years, and by her husband, Ross Vodden.

Ms. Vodden’s connection to the Beatles dates back to when she was Lucy O’Donnell, a schoolmate and friend of Julian Lennon, John Lennon’s son. Julian, then 4, came home from school with a drawing one day, showed it to his father, and said it was “Lucy in the sky with diamonds.”

At the time John Lennon was gathering material for his contributions to “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the landmark album released in 1967. He seized on the image and developed it into what is widely regarded as a psychedelic masterpiece, with haunting images of “newspaper taxis” and a “girl with kaleidoscope eyes.”

In the village of Hampstead, England, John Keats wrote most of his great odes and mature poems in a two-family house he shared with his friend Charles Brown. He also lived an acutely pent-up existence there—emotionally, mentally, and sexually.

Fanny Brawne would never become Mrs. John Keats, nor would they ever consummate their love. They became engaged in 1819 but delayed marrying until Keats earned some money or realized his inheritance; he died of tuberculosis in Rome before he could do either. But for a time at least, they did share the same house. Separated from her only by a thin wall, Keats composed lyrics of love and desire and frustration. He tossed and turned feverishly in his bed each night, tortured by the sounds of Fanny in the other half of the house: a laugh, a moan, a tap on the wall or a rustle of falling silks. Much of his later illness, Keats explained to his friend Brown, was caused by her teasing presence.

"I should have had her when I...

It was my wife, Marianne Berardi, who first saw the letters.

We were looking at a reproduction of Jackson Pollock's breakthrough work, Mural, an 8-by 20-foot canvas bursting with physical energy that, in 1943, was unlike anything seen before.

The critic Clement Greenberg, Pollock's principal champion, said he took one look at the painting and realized that "Jackson was the greatest painter this country has produced." A Museum of Modern Art curator, the late Kirk Varnedoe, said Mural established Jackson Pollock as the world's premier modern painter.

I was researching a book about Pollock's lifelong relationship with his mentor, Thomas Hart Benton, the famed regionalist and muralist, when I sat puzzling over a reproduction of Mural after breakfast one morning with Marianne, herself an art historian. She suddenly said she could make out the letters S-O-N in blackish paint in the upper right area of the mural. Then she realized JACKSON ran...

The subject explored by 'Turner and the Masters’ at Tate Britain is so fundamental to understanding the art of JMW Turner that I’m surprised it’s never been done before. All artists learn by copying the art of the past.

What makes Turner unique is that his engagement with the old masters was so blatant, so public, and lasted throughout his career. Whether you see them as acts of homage or confrontation, every picture by him in this show is a variation on a theme provided by an old master.

Seeing Turner’s canvases side by side with those of Claude, Poussin, Titian or Teniers I began to think that he is like a virtuoso musician playing scores written by long dead composers. In each case he is faithful to the structure of the original but as he works, he interprets and improvises until the finished canvas could never be mistaken for anything other than a Turner.

And just like a musician’s, the success of each performance varied, depending on his...

Pyramids and Pharaohs. Sphinxes and Sarcophagi. The Ten Commandments. The Book of the Dead. Crocodiles, Cobras, and Cleopatra. What other culture evokes such rich imagination and echoes of immortality as ancient Egypt?

On October 14, the Nile comes to Norfolk with the public debut of To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum. This blockbuster show, on view through January 3, 2010 in the Large Changing Gallery, promises to be one of the most extraordinary exhibitions that the Chrysler Museum ever has hosted.

As its title suggests, To Live Forever explores the age-old questions of immortality and life after death. For ancient Egyptians, death was an enemy that could be overcome through a bit of ingenuity and careful preparation. If their efforts were successful and the gods were appeased, the end of life on earth was merely a portal to a new beginning.

For its first-ever special exhibition of Egyptian antiquities, the Chrysler...

[Charles Affron and Mirella Jona Affron are the authors of the forthcoming “Opera Seasons: Power and Performance at the Metropolitan.”]

THE fracas during curtain calls for the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Puccini’s “Tosca” last Monday is just the latest episode in a grand history of operatic booing. Frank expressions of displeasure pierced the applause at the conclusion of Act II and exploded when the production team took its bows at the end of the opera. Many in the audience took umbrage at the villain’s lewd advances toward a statue of the Madonna; at the failure by Tosca to make her customary sweeping exit after stabbing the villain to death; and at the substitution, after an awkward pause, ofa stunt double for her suicidal leap.

Opera-goers of long standing and fierce memory will recall many episodes of booing. End-of-act bows have always cued the public to express approbation, indifference or disapproval. And many on Monday voiced the last, a...

Surreal. With a ring at the door and a gun pointed at a head, thieves stole a painting Thursday from the home of René Magritte. The Belgian artist died in 1967. But the 1948 portrait he painted of his wife is valued at $4.4 million and was hanging in a house he used to live in that is now an appointment-only museum. The two assailants did not wear masks and didn't injure anyone inside the Brussels home. "This painting, which is highly recognizable, is very unlikely to be attempted to be sold on the open market," an art loss expert told The Guardian.