Exhibition of the week
Michelangelo and Sebastiano
A fascinating closeup on Michelangelo’s genius in the years when he competed with Raphael and collaborated with his friend Sebastiano del Piombo in the intensely ambitious atmosphere of High Renaissance Rome.
• National Gallery, London, 15 March-25 June
Also showing
Lisa Brice
The colour is blue, the mood is sensual in this South African artist’s new paintings.
• Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, 17 March-22 April
Imagine Moscow
The visionary architectural projects unleashed by the Russian revolution are explored in this show that marks the centenary of 1917.
• Design Museum, London, 15 March-4 June
Lucio Fontana
Four centuries after Michelangelo’s death the slashed canvases of Lucio Fontana put Italy back at the forefront of art. Yet, as this exhibition shows, he was also a gifted ceramic sculptor.
• M&L Fine Art, London, until 12 May
Masterpiece of the week
Domenico Ghirlandaio, Portrait of a Young Man in Red, c1480-90
The eminent Florentine artist Ghirlandaio ran a large, profitable studio, and one of his pupils was the young Michelangelo - but was he grateful? When Giorgio Vasari revealed his apprenticeship to Ghirlandaio in The Lives of the Artists (1550), Michelangelo was furious and got his next biographer, Ascanio Condivi, to deny he was ever anyone’s apprentice. Yet he was, and this almost sculptural portrait shows the muscular style he picked up from his first master.
• National Gallery, London
Image of the week
Rodney Graham
The gravity and wit of Canada’s punk conceptualist gets a major showing in Gateshead this spring.
• Baltic, Gateshead, 17 March-11 June
What we learned this week
The great Howard Hodgkin has died, aged 84
One illustrator has turned iTunes’ terms and conditions into a graphic novel
Yan Wang Preston won photography’s Syngenta award
Isis’s second occupation has destroyed even more of Palmyra’s ancient treasures
Sculptor Tony Cragg was inspired by fossils
Jenny Holzer will be the next artist to adorn Blenheim Palace
London nearly got a Mies van der Rohe skyscraper
Gillian Wearing gave us a glimpse of her older self …
… and the National Portrait Gallery gave us Claude Cahun’s past masquerades to compare Wearing to
Japan’s architects think small to when crafting beautiful homes
The German government is attempting to trace looted Nazi art …
… while art historians want British treasures back from America
Get involved
Book now for a Guardian members’ event: a private view of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize at the Photographers’ Gallery, London.
Don’t forget
To follow us on Twitter: @GdnArtandDesign.
