Never shown to the public in traditional paintings, a vital layer which goes between paint and the support. White, colour, chalk or oil.
da Vinci
From the funerary portraits of Fayum, through the work of Jan van Eyck, to Leonardo, Rubens and Botticelli, many of the greatest paintings are on wood panels.
The final canto of the Inferno takes Dante to see Lucifer himself, after which Virgil guides him back to the surface of earth.
Count Ugolino was a leading and treacherous politician, who could only be trusted to betray others. He was left to die in prison of starvation.
Born near Florence in 1452, the Renaissance Man and polymath died 500 years ago when retired in France. A summary of his great artistic achievements.
Developed in the mid 1600s, pastels are often considered to be the ‘purest’ form of painting, in which pure pigment is applied to the ground.
Two final paintings, his striking portrait of Saint John the Baptist, and the highly controversial ‘Salvator Mundi’, the most expensive painting in the world.
Two lost paintings – a mural of the Battle of Anghiari in Florence, and a possible work showing Leda, plus his later Virgin and Child with St Anne.
Two probable copies of his lost Madonna with the Yarnwinder, and the most famous painting in the world: the Mona Lisa, which introduced sfumato and advanced glazing.
Some of the most famous works of European art: Vitruvian Man, The Last Supper, and the second (London) version of the Virgin of the Rocks.
