Until recently, the image at the head of my web page was a detail from Vermeer's View of Delft.
The View of Delft rightly deserves admiration, and none apparently recognised that more than Proust, who not only died with Vermeer's name on his lips, but who named the View as the painting beloved by Bergotte, a [...]

When I was last in Paris, I noticed a rather remarkable painting in the extensive French collection upstairs at the Louvre: Vénus, l’Hymen et l’Amour. The artist is Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) who seems to have had a refined sense of the allegoric. (He also painted the rather more famous Love and Friendship.)
The most obvious interpretation [...]