Exhibition of the week
Titian: Love, Desire, Death
The cycle of paintings assembled here for the first time in more than 300 years constitute one of the peaks of European art: nothing less than Titian’s answer to the Sistine Chapel.
• National Gallery, London, from 16 March to 14 June.
Also showing
Edmund de Waal
The potter and author pays homage to exiled writers from Dante to Judith Kerr.
Rineke Dijkstra
A video homage to Rembrandt’s Night Watch by the modern Dutch artist who shares his eye for human fragility.
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Kinky German nudes that have a Helmut Newton quality but were painted in the 16th century.
Cecil Beaton
The early work of the renowned style photographer with a slightly surreal eye.
Image of the week
British artist Maggi Hambling’s new portrait of tennis star Andy Murray is to go on display at the National Portrait Gallery. To this day, the pair disagree on how long she made him pose in his Wimbledon whites, while pretending to serve and return with his forehand and backhand. “It was actually a very short time,” Hambling insisted. Murray recalled it slightly differently: “Posing in these positions … felt like quite a long time for me. I was there for three to four hours in total, we did have breaks. It was difficult, it was a physical morning.” Read the full story here.
What we learned
What’s it like to spend a week living as Warhol, whose grip on pop culture extends from the Muppets to Trump
Jiri Kralovec’s drone-lit portraits of athletes are mesmeric
A new show offers an artistic tour of Cumbria’s west coast
Three millennia of art shows the impact of climate crisis on Indigenous Americans
Canberra’s Skywhale has returned to home await her papa
Phenomenal Women is honouring Britain’s black female professors
Sheena Liam’s threaded portraits are hair-raising and unique
Female photographers fled Nazi Europe and brought a fresh eye to UK life
Stone is responsible for some of the planet’s most stunning buildings
A mum’s photobook snoops in on the tricky journey of adolescence
An Essex swimming pool has turned JG Ballard’s Drowned World into a performance
Huge naval figureheads will be exhibited in the UK
Hobart’s Dark Mofo festival has been cancelled
Allen Wheatcroft’s lens captures people living their lives in the street
A new mall in Groningen is trying to survive without selling
Emma Talbot has won the Max Mara art prize
Fourth plinth artist Heather Phillipson is engrossed by disgust
Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things turns a blind eye to the dark side
Upcycled art exposes Australia’s fraught relationship with waste
Metallica out on the ‘ego ramp’ is Ross Halfin’s best photograph
Denelle and Tom Ellis recreated the 70s photo album to examine coupledom today
Masterpiece of the Week
The Gayer-Anderson Cat – Ancient Egyptian late period (7th-4th centuries BC)
This placid yet silently authoritative creature was cast in bronze towards the end of ancient Egypt’s 3,000-year-plus history as a kingdom and civilisation. The unknown artist who made it was heir to a stupendous artistic tradition able to mix the most observant realism with a profound sense of supernatural power. This sculpture is a perfect example of that sublime synthesis. It’s completely a cat – life-like and life-size. Yet it exudes mystery and magic. Egypt had a cat-headed goddess called Bastet, and held cats sacred. Mummified cats testify to their preciousness as pets and totems. All that belief and passion fills this bronze beast with a marvellous intensity.
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