Girl with a Pearl Earring is an oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, dated c. 1665

Vermeer's art: the enigma of "Girl with the pearl earring"

Discovering the mastery of Johannes Vermeer and the allure of his iconic painting in Amsterdam

Orsolya Antoni
12 September 2024

In 2023, my good friend and I had the pleasure of seeing the Vermeer exhibition in Amsterdam. We had a lot of fun while queuing up to buy the tickets, and we met a few very unique and interesting people. Among them was an 85-year-old Brazilian man, a former musician who now spends his time traveling the world. He had a special promise to keep for his granddaughter—a visit to the Vermeer exhibition in Amsterdam. His story was fascinating, and it made us wonder about the connection he saw between his life, his music, and Vermeer's art. This encounter, along with the excitement of seeing Vermeer's art up close, made the experience even more memorable.

Scott Lund’s discovery unites Da Vinci’s masterpieces

 

The Tempietto is a small commemorative tomb (martyrium) designed by Donato Bramante, to mark the location of the crucifixion of St Peter, San Pietro in Montorio, in Rome, Italy

Scott Lund’s discovery unites Da Vinci’s masterpieces

The hidden connection between the Mona Lisa and Salvator Mundi

31 DECEMBER 2024

BRENDA LEE BOHEN

Investigative historian Scott Lund has revealed that Salvator Mundi and the Mona Lisa were intended to be seen together as one single image. Leonardo Da Vinci’s two paintings, a brilliant combination of astronomy and mathematics, were projected together into one divine image with a camera obscura, claims Lund, who in 2011 discovered a ley line in the Mona Lisa landscape pointing directly 29.5 km southeast from the Vatican to the primary cult site of Roman goddess Diana at Lake Nemi. More importantly, on the sacred Christmas morning of the Vatican's grand Jubilee year in 1500 AD, the ley line momentarily extended toward the center of our galaxy, indicated by the star Kaus Australis, which peeked over the horizon in simultaneous conjunction with the Sun. Lund says Leonardo da Vinci envisioned the Mona Lisa's face being struck by the first light of that dawn as she gazed at the core of our Milky Way from Bramante's Tempietto atop Rome's Janiculum hill.Muas

The legal construction of racism in fascist Italy

Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy watching military manoeuvres in 1938

The legal construction of racism in fascist Italy

Antisemitism, racial doctrine, and the marginalization of Italian Jews

15 MARCH 2026, 

BRENDA LEE BOHEN

With the onset of World War I (1915-1918), Roman Jews, now full Italian citizens, were called upon to serve their country. All Jewish males of conscription age participated in the Great War. Italy had 50 Jewish generals and several military chaplains who were rabbis.

‘Life is much better, but I feel very alien’ … Eric Lampaert. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

The man who forgot himself: life before and after total amnesia

In 2019 Eric Lampaert woke up unable to recognise his friends, his parents, even his own name. After decades of anxiety, abandonment and bullying, was his mind just trying to shield him from his past?

Paula Cocozza

Sun 12 Jul 2026 14.00 BST

On the day his life changed, Eric Lampaert woke up and saw his hands. What amazed him was that they were moving in front of him, and he appeared to be the person in control of them. We’re drinking coffee in the Groucho Club in London, and at this point he lets go of his cup and wriggles his fingers. Lampaert is an actor and standup whose work has a strong clowning dimension. His hands always seemed to have minds of their own – and, sometimes, strong differences of opinion. But as he got out of bed that fateful morning, marvelling at the magical things on the ends of his arms, he felt only wonder. What he didn’t yet know was that he had lost his memory, and his life would no longer feel like his own.

Makeda … ‘It’s enough to know I can look like this.’ Photograph: Elizabeth Okoh

‘It was no longer a gift for my husband. It was all for me’: four women on how boudoir photography changed their lives

Now a hugely popular photographic genre, many women pay thousands to have intimate portraits taken of themselves by a professional. What do they get out of it?

Paula Cocozza

27 November 2025

Afew hours into Brittany Witt’s boudoir shoot, with the mimosas kicking in and the music going strong, the photographer asked: “How do we feel about some completely nude photos?” Witt was lying on the bed in lingerie, in a studio in Texas, and hadn’t considered nudity an option. “I was like: ‘OK, we’re on this trust path.’” She undressed. The photographer, JoAnna Moore, covered Witt with body oil and squirted her with water, then asked her “to crawl across the floor with my full trust,” Witt says. “I did so. The pose was nude, and it was completely open. I wasn’t covered with a sheet. It was all out, it was all open, and it brought that worst level of self-doubt. I was terrified.”

The cover of the sheet music for Debussy’s La Mer, 1905. Photograph: DEA/G Dagli Orti/De Agostini/Getty Images

The Great Wave: why has this become the defining image of our era?

Almost two centuries after its creation, Hokusai’s print is more popular than ever, featuring on everything from nail art to Lego to socks. What is its appeal?

Paula Cocozza

Tuesday 21 January 2025

Y

ou are never far from a great wave. Its foaming crest froths and sputters like ghostly fingers or monstrous claws raking over tote bags and journals. You can probably find it miniaturised in your emoji keyboard on your phone, and fading on a mouse mat or pair of socks somewhere nearby. The image – officially known as Under the Wave off Kanagawa, from Katsushika Hokusai’s series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji – depicts small boats facing down a large wave, and almost two centuries after its creation its appeal spans generations, continents, and socioeconomic bands.

‘Am I 68? 69?’ Irvine Welsh on growing old, getting clean, bashing out his new novel – and flirting with guns

‘My mother could be very critical of my books.’ Photograph: David Levene/

The big interview

Interview

‘Am I 68? 69?’ Irvine Welsh on growing old, getting clean, bashing out his new novel – and flirting with guns

Three decades after he channelled his heroin addiction into the cult classic Trainspotting, the Scottish author has discovered the joys of yoga, breathwork and standing desks. But is he quite as ‘Zen’ as he claims?

Paula Cocozza

Mon 3 Aug 2026 05.00 BST

By rights, Irvine Welsh ought to be photographed somewhere gritty, looking grumpy, he says: “That’s the brand.” Beside a graffitied wall or at the docks, with a beanie pulled low, and definitely not smiling. But here he is, clear-skinned and wholesome in shorts and a T-shirt, drinking tea and – it’s hard to think of anything more off-brand – talking about the health benefits of yoga. Given his reputation for having lived in the worlds his books portray, he should or could look a lot worse. He guffaws at this, eyes a delighted blue, and repeats the phrase as if he’s found a new personal tagline: “Could look a lot worse!”

‘Proust is the godfather of fashion’ / What writers’ clothes reveal about them

Joan Didion by Julian Wasser

‘Proust is the godfather of fashion’: what writers’ clothes reveal about them

This article is more than 9 years old

Samuel Beckett had a Gucci bag; Dorothy Parker worked for Vogue. A new book on writers’ style uncovers the hidden links between clothes and prose

Paula Cocozza
Sunday 16 July 2017

The title reads like a provocation: Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore. What? Shouldn’t authors, especially “legendary” ones, be exempt from fashion scrutiny? Surely we should look at their words, not their outfits. If they produced great works of art, who cares how they dressed?

Claudia Rankine: ‘The invisibility of black women is astounding’

 

Poet Claudia Rankine: ‘The invisibility of black women is astounding’

This article is more than 11 years old

The writer asked friends for their experiences of everyday racism and turned them into the award-winning Citizen. Here she talks about the power of making private anecdotes public

Paula Cocozza

Monday 21 June 2015

When Serena Williams was contesting the US Open in 2012, the American poet Claudia Rankine watched from the stands, engaged in a parallel skirmish of her own. She had taken her nine-year-old daughter to the final. They were sitting next to a white American. “And the guy,” Rankine says in surprise, “is cheering for the other player, not for Serena. So I say to him: ‘Are you American?’ And he says: ‘Yes.’ And I say: ‘So why are you cheering for the player from Belarus and not Serena Williams?’”