Exhibition of week
In the Age of Giorgione
The Renaissance artist Giorgione was a lutist, a lover and a tragic hero. He played his lute under Venetian balconies and spent his nights in Venetian bedrooms until he caught the plague from one of his many lovers. That’s the story told by Vasari in The Lives of the Artists, published in 1550, which made Giorgione one of the most glamorous figures in art. It helped that his paintings are so softly sensual. Then the modern scientific art scholars came along. One Giorgione after another got reattributed, often to Titian. Today, he is just the ghost of a great artist. Can this exhibition restore him to his rightful place?
• Royal Academy of Arts, London, 12 March-5 June.
Also showing
Sarah Lucas
Casts of parts of bodies, first shown in the Venice Biennale, are a piquant contemporary addition to the fragments and wonders in this dreamlike museum.
• Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, 10 March-21 May.
Imran Qureshi
Modern interpretations of Islamic art by this Pakistani artist make for a mystical journey of miniatures.
• The Curve, Barbican, London, until 10 July.
Visscher Redrawn
A great 17th-century drawing of London provides a troubling contrast with today’s out of control skyline.
• Guildhall Art Gallery, London, until 20 November.
Das Institut
The first big UK show for Kerstin Brätsch and Adele Röder, who work together under the eerie name Das Institut, combining painting and installation to investigate body, mind and language.
• Serpentine Gallery, London, until 15 May.
Masterpiece of week
The hill town in this achingly beautiful and poetic painting is virtually identical to one that appears in Giorgione’s famous painting Sleeping Venus. Does this mean the young Titian is the real creator of one of Giorgione’s most beguiling works? It certainly shows how closely they collaborated to heighten the sensuality of western art.
• National Gallery, London.
Image of week
Wrestlers are more famous than footballers in Senegal, earning up to £200,000 for a fight and using rituals, potions and amulets to secure victory. Christian Bobst followed the Dakar superstars from the Atlantic beaches where they train to the roar of the arena in his World Press Photo award-winning series.
What we learned
The V&A’s new Botticelli puts Venus in the gutter – and gets away with it
Tate’s new Georgia O’Keeffe show will go beyond flowers and vaginas
Satirising would-be world leaders – even Donald Trump – is tricky
What the World Trade Center’s new Oculus hub looks like inside
The Met Breuer – in the old Whitney building – makes an uncertain start
Some Israeli artists feel under attack from their own government
Patti Smith is not trying to change the world with her photography
There are houses in Palm Springs with 13 bathrooms. Thirteen!
A Chinese antiquities raid leaves the Hatton Garden heist in the shade
Archaeologists are crowd-funding a search for the Lindisfarne monastery
The London skyline has changed a lot since 1616 – and then again not
Andrew Wyeth’s beautiful landscapes have been recaptured in photos
Want to know where London’s newest free art space is? Ask your GP
A long-lost Caravaggio is going on display in Tokyo
Hiroshi Sugimoto manages to put a whole film into one photo frame
And the new documentary on Robert Mapplethorpe looks a must-see!
Share your art
At the heart of the flames: your art on the theme of fire
G is for grace: share you art of enlightenment
And finally
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