Ultramarine is a blue pigment derived from a semi-precious stone, lapis lazuli. During the Renaissance period, lapis lazuli was more highly prized than gold, and with good reason: its only source was in the remote province of Badhakhshan in northeast ... There's something deeply reassuring about a show that has been held every year, without interruption, since 1769. Wars and revolutions may come and go — indeed, entire civilizations may rise and fall — but the annual Royal Academy of Arts ... "Building the Picture" is about the bit of an Italian Renaissance painting that often seems to be jostling with the figures for pictorial space: the architectural background. In fact, as curators Amanda Lillie and Caroline Campbell convincingly demonstrate, buildings played ... Old age is no respecter of genius. True, there have been some artists — Goya, for example, or Monet — who managed one final great surge of creativity, but the sad fact is that far more end up plagiarizing themselves, ... The future King George VII carried out his first official engagement at a playgroup in Wellington, New Zealand, early in April 2014. By all accounts, the 8-month-old son of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge handled the occasion with aplomb: ... For several weeks now, the National Gallery has been a hive of activity as preparations were made for this new show — the first ever in the UK — on the great Venetian painter Paolo Veronese. Rooms have been closed, ... History, they say, is written by the winners, but most of what we know about the Vikings was recorded by their victims, who were usually Christian monks, and the monks were very sore losers. To them we owe the traditional ... This year sees the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, and museums and galleries across Britain are gearing up to commemorate the great event. The doors of the Imperial War Museum are closed until July 2014, and when ... The artist Richard Hamilton, who died in 2011, is mostly remembered today for the collage that he made for the exhibition "This is Tomorrow" at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1956. "Just What is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, ... Here is a great idea for a show. The Royal Academy of Arts has invited seven international architects to transform its main galleries with site-specific installations. The goal, in the words of Kate Goodwin, the RA's Drue Heinz ...
