Isabelle Kent is a PhD candidate at Trinity College, Cambridge

Old Masters are back in the running at the Walker Art Gallery

After a multimillion-pound refurbishment, Liverpool’s greatest gallery is rethinking what a Victorian collection of Renaissance art means today

2 Aug 2023
Saturn (1820–23), Francisco de Goya. Museo del Prado, Madrid

Are Goya’s Black Paintings really the work of a madman?

A new biography of Goya puts paid to the romantic fiction that the Spanish master ended his days isolated and insane

12 Feb 2021
The Return of the Prodigal Son (detail; 1660s), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

Bible belters – in praise of Murillo’s Prodigal Son paintings

The six paintings have long languished in relative obscurity. Restored and on view in Dublin, they are finally getting their due

3 Aug 2020
Triptych of the Virgin of Montserrat (detail; c. 1470–75), Bartolomé Bermejo.

An itinerant Iberian master – Bartolomé Bermejo at the National Gallery, reviewed

A small but dazzling display offers viewers in the UK a rare glimpse of a painter who fused Spanish and Flemish influences

25 Jun 2019
The Penitent Saint Jerome (detail; c. 1650), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. Museo del Prado

It’s time to return Murillo to the canon of the greats

A year in celebration of the Spanish baroque painter in Seville has made a clear case for his talent and influence

25 Jan 2019