Exhibition of the week<\/p>\n
Crossing into Darkness Also showing<\/p>\n Ming Wong Souvenir Story Painters, Picture Writers Solidarity Wins Image of the week Photograph: Ren\u00e9 Gerritsen\/Mauritshuis<\/p>\n Bucolic scene The Bull by Paulus Potter is one of the star paintings at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. But research has shown that the bull\u2019s testicles were halved in size by the artist to respect 17th-century sensibilities. The image above shows the original outline of the beast\u2019s build, against the painting\u2019s final form. Abbie Vandivere, a paintings conservator at the museum, says: \u201c[The bull\u2019s] balls were bigger and lower, his whole back end was shifted \u2013 but, indeed, the balls are the biggest change.\u201d More details here<\/a>.<\/p>\n What we learned<\/p>\n Ian McKellen will lip-sync to previously unheard audio tapes of LS Lowry<\/a><\/p>\n Performance artist Tehching Hsieh lived in a cage, jumped from a window and spent a year tied to a friend<\/a><\/p>\n David Bowie visited a psychiatric clinic in 1994 to spend time with outsider artists<\/a><\/p>\n Joseph Beuys\u2019 bathtub contains all the horrors of modern history<\/a><\/p>\n Piet Mondrian may owe his success to a cross-dressing lesbian artist who lived in a Cornish cove<\/a><\/p>\n Abstract painter Sean Scully uses loss, breakdown and schooling by \u2018scary nuns\u2019 to fuel his art<\/a><\/p>\n Trump has put museums and galleries in jeopardy across the States<\/a><\/p>\n Martin Roemers\u2019 remarkable photo series Homo Mobilis tells us what a person\u2019s vehicle says about them<\/a><\/p>\n Masterpiece of the week<\/p>\n Saint Cecilia by Pietro da Cortona<\/p>\n Photograph: Heritage Images\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Women often take centre stage in the religious art of the baroque \u2013 the emotive, sometimes lurid, often spectacular style that emerged in early 17th-century Italy to serve a renewed Catholic church in its battle for hearts and souls. This paved the way for a female visionary, Artemisia Gentileschi, to depict women as heroes and avengers: but as this work by one of her male contemporaries in early 1600s Rome reveals, that focus on the female was not unique to her. Perhaps it was a way for the church to involve and control women, for Cortona portrays Saint Cecilia as a bland-faced icon of chastity: the story of this early Christian figure had it that she refused to let her husband touch her. She also stands by a pipe organ, for Cecilia became patron saint of music in the middle ages. Harmonious and virtuous, Cortona\u2019s Cecilia urges women to emulate her, and do as they are told by the church. Sign up to the Art Weekly newsletter<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Get in Touch<\/p>\n
Tracey Emin curates an exhibition about thresholds of despair and the power of melancholy featuring Goya, Munch, Bourgeois, Baselitz and other visionary artists.
Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate<\/a>, opens Sunday<\/p>\n
The National Gallery\u2019s artist in residence responds to homoerotic paintings of Saint Sebastian.
National Gallery, London<\/a>, until 5 April<\/p>\n
Artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard curate this homage to the lost London of the late 1970s and early 1980s, with Michael Bracewell, Sal Pittman and more.
Fitzrovia Chapel, London<\/a>, until 8 February<\/p>\n
The power of narrative and the mysterious relation of words to images engross the artists here including Julian Bell, Gala Hills and Jane Griffiths.
St John\u2019s College, Oxford<\/a>, 20 January to 2 February<\/p>\n
Community-made posters, collages and other artworks testify to the power of popular struggle in north Edinburgh.
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh<\/a>, until 30 April<\/p>\n
National Gallery<\/a><\/p>\n