Exhibition of the week
Versailles: Science and Splendour
The palace of the Sun King was the birthplace of the modern world, says this blockbuster.
• Science Museum, London, 12 December-21 April
Also showing
Everest Revisited
Haunting images and stories of Everest mark the centenary of Mallory and Irvine’s disappearance in a doomed summit attempt.
• Rheged, Penrith, until 23 February
Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami
A cheeky pop reworking of the classics of Japanese art. Hokusai is spinning in his grave.
• Gagosian Grosvenor Hill, London, 10 December-8 March
Dürer to Van Dyck
Drawings from the Devonshire Collection with a focus on northern European artists of the Renaissance and baroque periods.
• Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, until 23 February
The Traumatic Surreal
The great Swiss surrealist Meret Oppenheim is among the German-speaking women in this show.
• Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, until 16 March
Image of the week
Music blares from a Ford Escort draped in a giant doily in Jasleen Kaur’s Turner prize-winning show. Our critic confesses that he’s wanted her to get the award since first seeing and hearing it. Read his full review
What we learned
A major show of Romantic genius Caspar David Friedrich opens in New York in 2025
Artists across the world expressed their fears about the second Trump presidency
Parmigianino’s Vision of St Jerome is a wild religious masterpiece
Queensland’s Asia Pacific Triennial is an explosion of colour and optimism
A rediscovered Elizabethan portrait may have been a love token for Sir Walter Raleigh
An enthralling new show traces art’s love-in with technology back to 1950
A shocking period of upheavals caused India’s artists and activists to innovate
A lost masterpiece by Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla is on show again after 134 years
Masterpiece of the week
The Coronation of the Virgin, 1407-09, by Lorenzo Monaco
You’d hardly believe art was about to be revolutionised in Florence from looking at this gothic scene, painted for the city’s San Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti monastery at the start of the 1400s. Lorenzo Monaco cleaves to a style created by Giotto a century earlier. His Virgin Mary is characterful and human, set under a realistic canopy, but there’s also an abstract formality to it all, as she modestly leans forward to be crowned above a gathering of angels. Other heavenly hosts are depicted on the many side panels that flank this central scene – all on view in the new medieval room at the National Gallery. The feelings Monaco aims at are simple, humble and reverent. Anyone could relate to his piety. Soon, Florentine artists would start experimenting with new ideas about perspective and classical proportion that made art more complex and rich – yet less accessible to the people.
• National Gallery, London
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