Art news

2019 marks the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death.

The second, long-lost version of Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes might have been rediscovered in the hands of private owners in France. Caravaggio painted two versions of the biblical scene in which Judith beheads the Assyrian general Holofernes to defend her beleaguered city.

In this article, we have gathered together the work of our favourite inspirational street artists, featuring some well-known faces, as well as some you may not have heard of - but will want to hear more about. Some just want to brighten up their neighbourhoods, while others have political points to make. But whatever their motivation, we think what they have produced is simply incredible.

It's no Mona Lisa, but a smudged red disk in northern Spain has been crowned the world’s earliest cave painting. Dated to more than 40,800 years ago, the shape was painted by some of the first modern humans to reach the Iberian Peninsula - or it may have been done by Neanderthals, residents of the Iberian peninsula for more than 200,000 years.

The top-selling lot of this evening’s auction was Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova's Still Life (Bluebells), which sold for £2,953,250/$4,637,488. The work was acquired by a bidder on the telephone. The painting, which is a rare example of Goncharova's early work and has been extensively published in monographs on the artist, is an exploration of Primitivism and Post-Impressionism. This museum-quality work remains among the most significant paintings by the artist ever to be offered at auction.

A painting by Leonardo da Vinci that was lost for centuries has been authenticated by distinguished scholars in the United States and Europe and will be exhibited at London's National Gallery as part of a Leonardo show that opens November.

The Western art world's hegemony is on its last legs, or at least so it would seem according to a recent report showing the extent of the Chinese art market's fantastic boom.

According to "The Global Art Market in 2010," a study commissioned by the Netherlands-based European Fine Art Foundation, last year China became the second largest market in the world with a global share of 23 percent. The United States remained in first place with 34 percent, with Britain downgraded from second to the third position with 22 percent (59 percent of the EU total). Already impressive, these figures were then questioned by the analysis of Artprice, which — focusing only on sales at public auctions — declared China to in fact be the dominant art market in the world, with 33 percent of the global sales.

Administration of the Paintings Gallery together with the initiative group of the Samara regional public organization of artists "Creative Union of Artists of Russia" in the face of Alexander Nagnibeda and his wife organized the group art exhibition "Ars Longa" (or, in translation from Latin, "Art is Eternal") of artists from the following Russian cities: Samara, Togliatti, Penza and Otradniy.

The exhibition was held in the premises of the gallery "New Space" of the Samara Regional Library (14-a, prospect Lenina, Samara) from February 24 to March 10, 2011.

Silvano Vinceti claims initials – possibly the model's – are discernible in the left eye of the iconic Da Vinci painting. An Italian researcher has sparked new controversy over the world's most famous painting by claiming Leonardo da Vinci painted tiny letters into the eyes of the Mona Lisa which may finally reveal the disputed identity of his model.