A sumptuous rehang, jumbo jellyfish and naive manly paintings – the week in art

7 hours ago 6

Exhibition of the week

The Wonder of Art
New ways of seeing European art from Jan van Eyck to Cézanne and Picasso in a sumptuous rehang of one of the world’s richest and deepest art museums. And all for free. Read the five-star review.
National Gallery, London, from 10 May

Also showing

Chantal Joffe: The Prince
Paintings of men and masculinity by this deliberately naive-looking, but in reality psychoanalytical, artist.
Newlyn Art Gallery and the Exchange, Cornwall, from 15 May to 1 November

Rene Matić
New photographs by one of the nominees for this year’s Turner prize. Read the review.
Arcadia Missa, London, until 3 June

Barbara Nicholls
Abstract watercolours that look like giant jellyfish risen from the deep.
Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London, until 21 June

Martin Creed
Everything Is Going to Be Alright – so Creed keeps telling us in neon, this time on the facade of a new arts centre.
Camden Arts Projects, London, until 29 June

Image of the week

Dublin’s bronze statue of fictional fishmonger Molly Malone.

After years of supposedly bringing good luck to whoever touched the breasts of Dublin’s Molly Malone statue, they are now off-limits as the city council is notifying would-be gropers to leave her cleavage alone. Read the full story.

What we learned

Robbie Williams’s art is ‘incredibly bad’

Desmond Morris’s first film was an eye-opening surrealist love romp

Artist Huma Bhabha is squaring up to Giacometti with wellies, skulls and teeth

Japan’s love hotels are wild

A rare LS Lowry painting bought for £10 in 1926 sold for £800,000

An “extreme” mould is threatening some of Denmark’s most important paintings

A Berlin art legend has put on a non-stop performance art piece for 25 years

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Artist Su Yu-Xin makes her paint from pearls, crystals and volcanic dust

Masterpiece of the week

The Virgin and Child, possibly by Antonello da Messina, c 1460-69

You can see a modern world emerge from the middle ages in this painting. It’s full of ripely gothic religious imagery, including the little angels with their stiff angular wings holding an ostentatiously bejewelled crown over Mary’s head. Yet look at her face. Her features are depicted with stunning precision as she looks down with gentle affection and modest reverence at her holy child. No one could portray a face this accurately before the 15th century, and the skill and technique were first perfected in Flanders by Jan van Eyck.

Yet this may not be a northern work at all. It’s tentatively attributed by the National Gallery to Antonello da Messina, one of the first Italian artists to assimilate Van Eyck’s discoveries. It was even said he journeyed from Naples to Bruges, befriended Van Eyck and stole his secrets. That is just a legend. Yet if this is by him, it shows his profound debt to the northern master.
National Gallery, London

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