Art history

Jacques-Louis David's The Death of Marat is a deceptively simple image of a real-life murder. But a closer look at the iconic painting reveals the political messages contained within.

Acclaimed new film The Mastermind, starring Josh O'Connor, tells the story of an art heist gone wrong. It's inspired by a wave of similar thefts at a time when society was in upheaval.

The unflinching gaze of the fearless US artist and war photographer bore witness to both beauty and brutality. Now she is the subject of a major exhibition at Tate Britain.

Prefiguring Banksy's latest Royal Courts of Justice mural depicting a judge attacking a protester, are centuries of art history where works have been censored or edited.

The Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce engagement photo is a part of a centuries-old tradition of "meticulously choreographed courtship", according to an art history expert.

A listening device hidden in an artwork in 1945 was undetected by US security for seven years – and it's not the only example of art having been manipulated for subterfuge.

Georges Seurat's once-mocked painting Bathers at Asnières is both an "exquisite distillation of the very essence of summer" and "a modern wonder in the art of seeing".

They helped to make Vincent van Gogh among the most famous and influential painters in the history of art. Why did sunflowers obsess him and so many other artists before and since?