Art history - Getty Images

Art history

Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray by David Martin, c1779.

What great paintings sayDido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray by David Martin, c1779

Blood, sweat & marble: examining ancient bodies

Oddball art: cannibals, hellscapes & flying monks

Baptism of Christ c1567, by Juan Fernandez de Navarrete

The “silent study of art”: the deaf artists of the Renaissance

Two-Penny Whist, published January 11, 1796, James Gillray (English, 1756-1815), published by Hannah Humphrey (English, c. 1745-1818), England, Etching in dark brown, with handcoloring, on cream wove paper, 231 × 334 mm (image), 247 × 350 mm (plate), 270 × 384 mm (sheet). (Photo by: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

15 minutes of fameHannah Greig chooses Hannah Humphrey

Hannah HumphreyEntrepreneurial Georgian printseller

Love, marriage & wallpaper: the artistic lives of Jane and William Morris

A painting showing a man and woman side by side with somber expressions. The man holds a pitchfork.

What great paintings sayAmerican Gothic By Grant Wood, 1930

Marriage à-la-mode: 2. The Tête à Tête.

What great paintings sayMarriage à-la-mode: 2. The Tête à Tête by William Hogarth, c1743–45

The Arnolfini portrait painting – oil on wood – appears to depict a wealthy couple holding hands in a domestic setting, the bed perhaps indicating that they are in a bedchamber

What great paintings sayThe Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck, 1434

A wall mosaic of Picasso’s Guernica painting.

Q&AWhy did Pablo Picasso paint Guernica?

Naked statues, naughty gods & bad wine

The Duke stars Jim Broadment and Helen Mirren, pictured with Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington

The Duke: The real story of Kempton Bunton and the theft of Goya’s Wellington portrait

Louis Wain, c1900, with one of his pet cats. Photo by Ernest H. Mills/Getty Images)

Louis Wain: the cat-loving artist who forever changed the way that we see our feline friends

Second World War

The secret WW2 mission to save Britain’s art collections

Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian, by Jacob Marrel, 1679 (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images via Getty Images)

Maria Sibylla Merian: the artist who challenged the natural world

William Hogarth, seen in a self-portrait with his pug

William HogarthThe satirical artist inspired by the teachings of the Bible

Medieval manuscript makers

Josiah Wedgwood: the radical father of English pottery

Daniel Lambert in a 19th-century painting

Super-sized Georgians: why satirists were fixated with fatness

Wedgwood: the radical potter

Should they stand or fall? The great statue debate

Napoleon portrait by Jacques-Louis David shows is perhaps the most famous painting of the French emperor with one hand tucked out of sight

Why do Napoleon’s portraits often show him with one hand inside his shirt? The story of the French emperor’s missing hand…

Hogarth: the chronicler of the 18th century

The Enlightenment: everything you wanted to know

Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy (Photo by Alamy)

Ravenna: from Roman powerhouse to artistic hub

William Blake: “artist or genius, or mystic, or madman”

Painting the Tudors: Hans Holbein the Younger

Napoleon the art thief

Zdeněk Burian’s painting from 1952 offers a sympathetic portrayal of Neanderthals practising cannibalism. Self-assurance, even contentment, emanate from “It appears as a calm response to death, rather than murderous carnage,” writes Rebecca Wragg Sykes. (Photo by Time Life Pictures/Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)

Neanderthal in the mirror: our changing perceptions of these ancient humans