JUST PUBLISHED! Our latest article explores the rediscovery of a lost 17th century masterpiece, Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ, and its unexpected connection with a notorious Irish murder over a hundred years ago. Read it at

US Impressionist Daniel Garber plays with light and shadows in ‘The Old Mill’ (1921)

In Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte’s self-portrait of himself painting a bird, the direction of his gaze suggests that he believes that, yes, the egg really did come first (Clairvoyance, 1936). And at R, a photographic portrait of him painting the self-portrait

Monet set this painting ‘The Luncheon’ in the garden of his house in Argenteuil. His young son Jean is playing in the shade by the uncleared table, and the child's nanny is in the background, keeping close watch (1873, Musée d‘Orsay)

Photographer Sam Abell captures this image of spring blossoms in the rising mist at Elly’s Ford in the Virginia hills

In the 1930s, the Jesuit Residence in Dublin received the modest gift of a painting. It was duly hung on a wall, and basically forgotten about. Sixty years later, an expert restorer had a chance to look at it. It turned out to be this Caravaggio masterpiece

From over 100 yrs ago, this photograph of two painters on a hazy Dordogne riverbank was created by the Autochrome process ~ it produced dream-like, light-filled colour images without artificial colourising, & was the main colour process until the 1930s (Gervais-Courtellemont)

Woman holds on as she points into the abyss (has her hat blown off?) / man at R, braced on bush, contemplates evening vista / another, hat on ground, creeps to edge of chalk cliffs of Rügen. Caspar David Friedrich painted this after visiting the island on his honeymoon (1818)

@AnnMile71721158 Yes, they seem to represent a wide range of things, which makes interpretation difficult

@rpjsherwood I think you're onto something there...

@AnnMile71721158 The purse. He's trying to look innocent

@AnnMile71721158 @churchartnature Hi Ann, the original has been lost. This is the copy claimed to be the best (there are others not so good). It's kept under lock and key after being stolen (and returned) a few years ago

During the 18th century, a period when Japan had cut itself off from the outside world, Ito Jakuchu was producing masterful paintings on silk scrolls ~ here is ‘Peach Blossoms, Small Birds’

Monet felt “bathed in blue air” when he sojourned in the coastal town of Antibes in 1888, and commented that it was “so clear and pure in its pinks and blues that the slightest misjudged stroke looks like a smear of dirt”. Here’s what he saw

Oops, yesterday's post about the Hotel Solvay's staircase should have referred to "electricity", not "publicity"

@DerekTurner1964 Hi Derek, you're right of course. No idea how "publicity" got in there!

In Ireland, on 15 June 1920, Captain Percival Lea-Wilson was gunned down in a hail of bullets on a suburban street. The murder set off a complex chain of events which culminated, astonishingly, in the 1990 rediscovery of this masterpiece by Caravaggio

Early-20C Swedish artist Carl Larsson reminds us just how useful benches can be as places for reading– Holiday Reading / Woman Lying on Bench