Art history in today's news

Paris has its Zurbarán. Since 7 October the Louvre has been showing Zurbarán (1598–1664) in the Hall Napoléon, a major exhibition of the Spanish Golden Age painter organised with the National Gallery in London and the Art Institute of Chicago. After its summer run in London, the show is in Paris until 25 January 2027, and then moves to Chicago. Among the loans in the London display was one of the quietest pictures Zurbarán ever painted: a lamb with its legs tied, lying on a stone ledge. Vintage art poster by Sapiens Verbum after Francisco de Zurbarán, Agnus Dei , c. 1635–1640 (oil on canvas, 38 × 62 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid). Available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get the vintage poster → Quick facts What: Zurbarán (1598–1664) , exhibition Where: Musée du Louvre, Hall Napoléon, Paris When: 7 October 2026 – 25 January 2027 (after London, 2 May – 23...

Today, 18 October, is the feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, the patron saint of painters. Luke is the only Gospel writer who tells the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus lost in Jerusalem and found three days later in the Temple, sitting among the teachers. One of the most ambitious Victorian paintings of that scene, William Holman Hunt’s The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple , hangs today in Birmingham. Vintage art poster by Sapiens Verbum after William Holman Hunt, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple , 1854–1860 (oil on canvas, 85.7 × 141 cm, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery). Available from the Sapiens Verbum print shop. 🖼️ Get the vintage poster → Quick facts What: The feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, patron saint of painters When: 18 October The story: Luke 2:41–52, the boy Jesus found in the Temple, told only in Luke’s Gospel The painting: William Holman Hunt, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple ...

The Leiden Collection has its eighteenth Rembrandt. On 28 September 2026 Thomas Kaplan’s New York collection announced the purchase of Saint John on Patmos (c. 1661), a late canvas in which the sitter is the painter’s son, Titus. For a century the picture was read as a portrait. Cleaning before the December 2025 sale brought a palm tree and an eagle out of the background. The island is Patmos. The bird is the evangelist’s. The face is still Titus. Rembrandt, Titus as a Monk, 1660. Oil on canvas. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Public-domain artwork. The newly acquired Saint John on Patmos is a different canvas; this is the same sitter, a year earlier. 🖼️ Get this painting as a print → Quick facts What: Leiden Collection acquires Rembrandt’s Saint John on Patmos (c. 1661), its 18th painting by the artist Where: Leiden Collection, New York; bought at Sotheby’s London When: Announced 28 September 2026; sold 3 December 2025 for ...