CONTEMPORARY ART

Contemporary Art

The Venice Biennale, which takes place this month, has inspired countless other festivals and fairs. why is the original so successful?

ARCHITECTURE

Architecture

Can a last-minute campaign preserve an extraordinary scottish house intact?

Love letter to a goddess

Karl Briullov is often regarded as the founder of Russian Romanticism. Kristen Regina argues that one of his most celebrated works, a painting of his lifelong friend Countess Samoilova, contains hidden symbols that allude to a passionate but secret love affair between artist and sitter.

Harlequinade on a Teapot

The unexpected appearance at Christie’s last year of a highly unusual Worcester teapot with ‘harlequin’ decoration proves beyond reasonable doubt that its decorator, James Giles, must have made an entire service in this style. But what was it made for, asks Stephen Hanscombe?

Found in Translation

The Chinese House in the garden at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, is decorated with enchanting paintings inspired by Chinese art. Emile de Bruijn recounts the building’s strangely itinerant history, traces the sources of its decoration, and places it in the context of the mania for chinoiserie in Regency England.

Casts & Connoisseurs

This month is the 200th anniversary of the Elgin Marbles going on public view in London. The response they received was at first mixed, yet, for reasons that Marc Fehlmann explains, by the 1830s they had become integral to western art history and students everywhere were copying casts of them.