Articles
Long-form stories about museums, artists, and the works that outlived their worlds.
Article · 45 min readThe Mauritshuis in The Hague: 20 paintings and how they came hereA house built on Brazilian sugar, a Dou given to Charles II and brought back by William III, pictures taken to Paris in 1795, a goldfinch bought by a connoisseur, and a merry company bought with lottery money. 20 paintings.
Article · 22 min readThe Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence: ten works made for somewhere elseA clay model for a piazza, a panel from a bedroom wall, an apostle begun for the cathedral, a David moved indoors in 1873, prisoners from a garden grotto and a viola made for the Medici. Ten works, and why each one left home.
Article · 38 min readThe National Gallery of Art in Washington: 20 pictures that came from private handsHermitage pictures Mellon bought in secret, a dime-store founder's old masters, a Philadelphia house moved whole, a Leonardo bought from a prince, and a Vermeer the gallery stopped believing in. 20 works.
Article · 37 min readGallerie dell'Accademia, Venice: twenty works and how each one got hereCarpaccio's Venice painted for the confraternities, a Last Supper Veronese renamed after the Inquisition, the Pietà Titian meant for his tomb, The Tempest, and a Tiepolo sketch of a ceiling a bomb destroyed. 20 works.
Article · 42 min readWhat to See at the Louvre: 25 HighlightsAn Italian house painter walks out of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa under his smock, a queen escapes from Blois by night, a critic counts an odalisque's extra vertebrae. Twenty-five works and how they got there.
Article · 30 min readWhat to See at the Met: 15 HighlightsAn Egyptian temple arrives in Brooklyn packed beside canned tomatoes. A drawing the size of a sheet of paper sits inside an eleven-metre scroll. Fifteen works at the Met, and what each of them went through to get there.
Article · 20 min readMuseo del Prado: The Paintings That Outlived Their WorldsA beheaded king's collection goes to his creditors. A palace room is taken apart. Murals are cut off the walls of a deaf man's house. Eight paintings in the Prado, and what each of them outlived.
Article · 49 min readMusée d'Orsay: From Napoleon III's Cabanel to the 43-Million-Euro CaillebotteA widow who failed to buy the Angelus, painters chipping in for Olympia, Whistler pawning his mother, a Cézanne found in a stolen Peugeot, a Courbet paid as inheritance tax. 25 works and how France kept them.
Article · 40 min readGalleria Borghese: From Scipione Borghese to the State PurchaseA painter arrested over his arquebuses and stripped of 107 pictures, a Raphael carried out of a church at night, Domenichino jailed for refusing a cardinal, seven hundred antiquities sold to Napoleon. 20 works at the Borghese.
Article · 41 min readThe Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum: 20 pictures bought by a father and his sonThe one Henry VIII nobody doubts is Holbein's, a knight sold as a Dürer, a Kandinsky the Guggenheim sold, a Mondrian made of tape, a Gauguin the museum never owned and a Pissarro still in court. 20 works.
Article · 31 min readThe Belvedere: from Pacher's altarpiece to the Amalie Zuckerkandl caseA Gothic altarpiece cut up for a Baroque one, a sculptor refused a professorship, the Secession buying Van Gogh, the state paying for an unfinished Kiss, a director buying from seized collections. 20 works.
Article · 37 min readPinacoteca di Brera: From Napoleon's Requisitions to the Grande BreraAltarpieces taken from closed churches, a polyptych sawn apart and put back together, frescoes lifted off walls, a Rubens swapped with the Louvre. 20 works and how each reached the Brera in Milan.
Article · 57 min readThe Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: 25 works and their ownersA polyptych blacked out by iconoclasts, a militia portrait cut down to fit a wall, a town hall painted after it burned, a hanged statesman, a captured Javanese prince, and a Rembrandt the state bought from the Rothschilds. 25 works.
Article · 44 min readThe Gemäldegalerie in Berlin: 20 paintings that Berlin bought, lost and dividedA Leda whose head was cut out with a knife, a merchant's 3,000 pictures, a Vermeer sent to America in 1945, a Caravaggio lost in a flak tower and a famous Rembrandt the museum itself unattributed. 20 paintings.
Article · 37 min readThe Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden: how 15 paintings were bought, renamed and brought backA Vermeer signed Meer that nobody could place, a Holbein sold as a Leonardo, a copy revered as the original, a bullet in a Rubens and the Sistine Madonna's ten years in Moscow. 15 paintings.
Article · 25 min readThe National Gallery of Bulgaria: 15 Works in Which Bulgarian Painting Took ShapeAn icon painter from Samokov paints his own face, a Czech teacher signs in Cyrillic, a minister in exile learns to paint in Florence. Fifteen works that follow Bulgarian painting from the icon to a school of its own.
Article · 41 min readKunstmuseum Basel: from the Amerbach purchase to the case of Rousseau's Muse, 1661–2023Holbein's dead Christ that held Dostoevsky still, Passion panels the city would not sell to Bavaria, a Franz Marc with a third burnt away, and a Rousseau bought in 1940 at a price its buyer called shameful. 20 works.
Article · 41 min readThe Uffizi: The Museum That Outlived the MediciIn 1737 the last of the Medici signed her family's art away on one condition: none of it could leave Florence. The museum that grew out of that clause, told through the works the family gathered and the disasters the collection outlived.
Article · 45 min readCapodimonte: how 20 works came to the hill above NaplesA Titian left unfinished for the pope's family, Bruegels taken from an executed conspirator, a copy that fooled Raphael's own pupil, a mouse with a crust, and a Danaë that went to Göring's house. 20 works.
Article · 30 min readNational Gallery of Athens: fifteen paintings, from Venice to the AegeanAn El Greco Greece bought with a national collection, a ceiling of angels cut from an Annunciation, Kanaris firing the Ottoman flagship, a Missolonghi carried in procession every year, and an island summer in a straw hat. 15 paintings.
Article · 21 min readMusée de l'Orangerie: Monet, Paul Guillaume and DomenicaMonet designs his own gift and its rooms, Guillaume commissions Derain, Rousseau pays his greengrocer with a picture, Domenica buys the Cézanne the Louvre turned down. 15 paintings at the Orangerie.
Article · 48 min readThe Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna: 25 works and how they reached the HabsburgsA gold salt cellar given for standing in at a wedding, Bruegels pledged by a guarantor, a bride's portrait sent to Vienna, an Ecce Homo from a murdered duke's sale and a Vermeer sold to Hitler. 25 works.
Article · 25 min readThe National Museum of Art of Romania: 15 Works and How They Reached a Former Royal PalaceA fresco cut from a church wall, a Venus painted over with clothes that came off only in the 1990s, a portrait hit by two bullets in 1989. Fifteen works and how each reached the palace.
Article · 36 min readPalazzo Pitti: From Aretino's Gift to the Savoy Throne RoomA Raphael taken from Pescia at night, a court dwarf painted nude on both sides of one canvas, a bathroom begun for a Napoleon who never came, Savoy arms over a grand-ducal chair. 20 stories from Palazzo Pitti.
Article · 39 min readHelene Kröller-Müller: how the museum at Otterlo came togetherA dark study for 110 guilders, four withered sunflowers she was laid out in front of, a Baldung that ended up with Göring, Mondrian's Christmas mood, and a bronze cast 18 years after its maker's murder. 20 works.
Article · 42 min readThe Alte Pinakothek: 20 paintings and how they came to MunichA battle Napoleon is said to have hung in his bathroom, Dürers taken from Nuremberg, a Raphael Ludwig I called the dove, a Leonardo bought for 47 marks and a Dürer altarpiece hit with acid. 20 paintings.
Article · 39 min readThe Van Gogh Museum: his mother, Theo, Gauguin and the other people in his paintingsA church painted for his mother with a broken hip, Potato Eaters a friend tore apart in a letter, café tables shaped like tambourines, Gauguin's empty chair, almond blossom for a newborn nephew. 20 works.
Article · 39 min readHow the National Gallery Came Together: From Angerstein to ArtemisiaParliament buys a banker's 38 pictures, a director tours Italy, an anonymous donor saves a Holbein on the last day, a pensioner hides a Goya in a wardrobe. 25 works and how they reached the gallery.