Morandi's Legacy: Influences on British Art Estorick Collection, 39a Canonbury Square, N1, until 18 June The pre-eminent Italian still-life painter Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) is frequently called an artists' artist, which is usually taken to indicate that his extreme formality or painterliness (depending on who is arguing the case) appeals more to those in the know than to the man ...

The Maya - read more hereMedieval art - read more hereFranz Xaver Messerschmidt - Character Head: Zweiter Schnabelkopf (c1770) Messerschmidt's gurning Character Heads are fetishistic self-portraits. The increasingly tormented artist used to sculpt the heads from reflections of grimaces provoked by self-inflicted pain, thus conjuring a mask that would effectively keep at bay the malignant spirit that caused the pain ...

The first thing you’ve got to say about the Met’s new exhibition of Giorgio Morandi’s paintings, prints and drawings is this: It’s about time. Over the past few years, a handful of almost surreptitious gallery exhibitions were devoted to the Italian modernist. The pickin’s were slim—10 paintings in each venue, if that—but they ...