Andrew Butterfield

A ‘Magic Mirror’ of Venice

The first-ever exhibition outside Italy of the works of Vittore Carpaccio is a bracing introduction to the artist who best captured the imaginative grandeur and the ceremonial refinement of early-sixteenth-century Venice.

Divine Lust

“Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer” at the Met

Raphael Up Close

“Raphael: The Drawings” provides a rare chance to see up close a wide array of the artist’s works from throughout his life, and the effect is thrilling and revelatory.

Remembering Bob Silvers

On the late editor of The New York Review

Botticelli in Hell

He was determined to be the first painter to do justice to Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy.’

Wrathful, Serene Statues

Every age is one of anxiety. But few have responded with art more deeply serene than that of the Kamakura Period in Japan (1185-1333).

The Magic of Donatello

“Since the end of classical antiquity nearly a thousand years before, no Italian sculptor had tried anything so bold in the carving of marble sculpture.”

A Renaissance Masterpiece

Donatello’s large sculpture of the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk is often said to be the most important marble statue of the fifteenth century.

Rembrandt in the Depths

“Rembrandt: The Late Works,” an exhibition now on view at London’s National Gallery, will linger long in the mind of anyone who has the pleasure to see it. It reveals a great artist working with unprecedented technical command and emotional power, even as the world closes in around him.

The Majesty of Veronese

Perhaps more than any other picture in the National Gallery’s Paolo Veronese exhibition, The Family of Darius before Alexander reveals Veronese’s great strengths as a painter; it also makes clear why he can seem so foreign to common modern ideals of art and of the artist.

Prodigious Veronese

The greatness of ‘The Family of Darius before Alexander’

The Serene Beauty of Canova

Canova was the most celebrated artist in Europe in the early nineteenth century, and yet he has rarely been the subject of an exhibition in America. Until now.

Trapped in Vienna

In the city that inspired The Man Without Qualities and The Woman Without a Shadow, early twentieth-century portraiture often depicted figures in a state of dematerialization or unreality, in which the dead and the dying, dreams and ghosts predominate.

Sad and Supreme

Dürer’s Devil Within

An extraordinary exhibition about Albrecht Dürer at the National Gallery of Art shows the artist fascinated with the close scrutiny of dark and brooding emotion.

The Triumph of Bronze

Recasting the Ancients

The small but elegant show of Antico on view at The Frick Collection through Sunday comes closer than any earlier attempt to uncovering the enigma of this master’s art. Part of what makes Antico so mysterious for us is the sharp difference of his sensibility from our own. Like so many of the great sculptors of the early Renaissance, Antico was trained as a goldsmith, but unlike, say, Ghiberti or Verrocchio, this experience was fundamental for every aspect of his technique and aesthetic.

They Clamor for Our Attention

Gossart: The Glow of Inspiration

Jan Gossart at the Met

Before it closes on January 17, I urge readers to rush over to the exhibition of Jan Gossart at the Metropolitan Museum to experience its unexpected pleasures.