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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Jonathan Jones

Da Vinci’s dark side, our need for nature and a big pinch of salt – the week in art

An Old Woman (The Ugly Duchess) by Quinten Massys, c 1513, centrepiece of a new exhibition at the National Gallery.
An Old Woman (The Ugly Duchess) by Quinten Massys, c 1513, centrepiece of a new exhibition at the National Gallery. Photograph: National Gallery, London

Exhibition of the week

The Ugly Duchess: Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance
The National Gallery investigates grotesque humour in the Renaissance and reveals the dark side of Leonardo da Vinci.
National Gallery, London, from 16 March to 11 June

Also showing

Empowering Art: Indigenous Creativity and Activism from North America’s Northwest Coast
Contemporary takes on the great Indigenous art traditions of the Pacific coast, which were established long before the USA.
Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, from 12 March to 30 July

Nastja Säde Rönkkö
Prize-winning Finnish video art about salt and its mythologies, from blood to seawater.
Beaconsfield, London, from 16 March to 6 May

Mutant and Nondurable by nabbteeri, 2020, from Interspecies Entanglements in Sheffield.
Mutant and Nondurable by nabbteeri, 2020, from Interspecies Entanglements in Sheffield. Photograph: Courtesy of nabbteeri

Interspecies Entanglements
Our interdependence with the rest of nature is investigated by Vivian Caccuri, Keira Greene, nabbteeri and others.
Site Gallery, Sheffield, from 16 March-28 May.

Deep Horizons
Tony Robinson, Dr Julietta Singh, nautical pilot Geoff Taylor, and artists Liliane Lijn and Fiona Crisp are among those turning curator to see the Mima collection afresh.
Mima, Middlesbrough, until 18 June.

Image of the week

Work in Progress, By Jann Haworth and Liberty Blake

Work in Progress by Jann Haworth and Liberty Blake (2021-22)
Inspired by the Sgt Pepper’s album cover, Work in Progress is a seven-panel mural (of which three panels are shown here) featuring the likeness of 130 British women from Boudicca to Mary Beard. Commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery as part of its three-year project to expand female representation in its collection, it will handily double the number of women on the walls of the post-1900 galleries to 48%, when the buildings reopen in June following extensive refurbishment. Read the full story here.

What we learned

A rare Brueghel the Younger painting was found behind a door in a French family home

A Ming dynasty Buddha found in Australia could rewrite history

Modernist master David Chipperfield almost failed architecture school

The Californian desert is full of sculptural wonders

The band once known as Exit Through the Gift Shop are selling their Banksy

Harewood House near Leeds has commissioned a portrait of actor and author David Harewood

A Henry Moore fund will pay the bills of sculptors struggling with the cost of living

The Picasso museum in Paris has reinvented itself to address the artist’s troubled reputation

Treasures from new digs show Pompeii is not frozen in time

Britain could still lose Joshua Reynolds’ magnificent Portrait of Omai

James McBey was the Rembrandt of Aberdeenshire

En Liang Khong has won this year’s Observer/Anthony Burgess prize for arts journalism

Typist Artist Pirate King is a generous portrait of neglected artist Audrey Amiss

Masterpiece of the week

The Adoration of the Magi, attributed to Hieronymus Bosch

The Adoration of the Magi, attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, circa 1515.
The Adoration of the Magi, attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, circa 1515. Photograph: Alamy

The fantastic visionary mind of Bosch blazes from this excellent early copy of one of his eeriest works. The original is in the Prado, Madrid, but you could mistake this version for a painting by the mysterious artist from ‘s-Hertogenbosch. It’s a surreal masterpiece that has nothing in common with the portraits and landscapes elsewhere in the stately home where it hangs. The city in the distance resembles something from a sci-fi film or game, its bulging buildings alien and bizarrely organic. In front of the stable, an African king is portrayed in a lifelike way, perhaps based on someone Bosch met in the global port of Antwerp. The rotting stable has a slumping tragicomedy to it. From inside, the semi-nude antichrist gawps at the newborn child. All is utterly changed in this apocalyptic adoration.
Petworth House, National Trust

Don’t forget

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