Art History

Arts & Culture

Miniature Qur’ans and travelling manuscripts

Didar: Stories of Middle Eastern Manuscripts is a new exhibition from the Grimwade Centre bringing together themes of making and cultural knowledge

Arts & Culture

The Queen who defied the Holy Roman Emperor

An Italian-born princess and sole heir to the Sforza dukedom, Queen Bona helps us understand how elite Renaissance women acquired, maintained and negotiated power

Arts & Culture

Is this the earliest depiction of a dodo in art?

The Jagiellonian arrases – tapestries that decorate the walls of Wawel Castle in Poland – may be one of the earliest known artistic representation of the long-extinct dodo

Arts & Culture

The remarkable journey of Leonardo’s inscrutable masterpiece

Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, known as the Lady with an Ermine, is one of Poland’s national treasures, but the painting has had an extraordinary history

Arts & Culture

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Podcast

The oddities of existing things

Between the eighth and thirteenth centuries, Islamic thinking and literature was at its height, and one text in particular attempted to catalogue life, the universe and everything

Arts & Culture

The perfection of David

Michelangelo’s statue of David is an iconic statement on physical perfection and continues to inspire emerging artists, says a University of Melbourne expert.

Arts & Culture

Why you should go to MOMA at NGV

Some of the greatest art works of the 20th and 21st centuries have taken up (temporary) residence in Melbourne; here’s your expert guide to ten of the best

Arts & Culture

The demon dance: A modern reimagining

VCA dance students are recreating a seminal work from the founder of Australia’s first modern dance company, nearly 90 years after it was first performed in London

Arts & Culture

Small pictures, big legacy: The 9 by 5 exhibition then and now

The Victorian College of the Arts is marking one of Australia’s most influential moments in art, the 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition of 1889, which saw some of the country’s best known artists displaying on cigar box lids

Arts & Culture

Power and Pomp at Versailles

Some of the opulent palace’s most stunning objects are on display outside Versailles for the first time, in an exhibition led by Melbourne alumnus Gerard Vaughan