Portraits of the Emperor Vespasian (AD 69–79) are characterised by a deliberate realism in contrast to the idealising, classical portrait style of the previous Augustan and Julio-Claudian regim

Born in Tuscany, Orazio Gentileschi was the son of the Florentine goldsmith, Giovanni Battista di Bartolomeo Lomi.

Elisabetta Sirani (1638–65) was born into an artistic family in Bologna and was taught to draw and paint by her father Giovanni Andrea Siran

A native of Bologna who trained initially in sculpting stucco and terracotta, Alessandro Algardi moved to Rome in 1625 and was based there for the rest of his life.

The enigmatic Giorgio de Chirico said of his work that he was ‘painting that which cannot be seen

Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614) is the first woman painter to forge a long and successful career in Europe, which she did for almost forty year

The attribution of Old Master paintings is fluid at times, as ongoing research brings to light new information. The National Gallery of Victoria’s enigmatic Profile portrait of a lady, c….

When recommending the purchase of this sombre yet arresting painting by the celebrated Venetian artist Titian (born Tiziano Vecellio), Frank Rinder, the London-based adviser to the Felton Bequest, wrote in…

Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal et duc de Richelieu (1585–1642), was the most powerful French statesman of his da

This eighteenth-century painting of a cellist is one of the most charming and intriguing portraits in the NGV Collection.

This portrait was formerly attributed to a number of artists, including Raphael, an artist in the circle of Correggio, and Paolo Morando.

PROJECT Referencing Western sculptural traditions, Thomas J Price’s works play with methods of presentation, material and scale, to highlight the inadequate and prejudiced representations of Black people today and throughout…

PROJECT In this installation Ezz Monem explores the tension between reverence and the profane by recontextualising references to the name ‘Mohamed’ from Egyptian and broader Middle Eastern cinema.

PROJECT Farrokh Mahdavi’s symbolic use of pink comes from the translation of the Persian word for ‘pink’: ‘soorati’, named after ‘soorat’, which refers to the ‘face’.

PROJECT Gary Hume is a British painter, sculptor and printmaker who came to prominence as a member of the Young British Artists in the early 1990s.