Kenneth Clark

Every generation has its own Leonardo, and for many he remains a man of mystery. Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor in Art History at Oxford and the author of the recently published Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting, helps us identify the non-mythical Leonardo. What might Leonardo be doing were he alive today, in our own digital age?

As a believer in the humanising nature of proper work, the virtues of sustained attention and the value of aesthetics as the keystone to ideals for a truly prosperous society, John Ruskin’s abiding concerns are still very much with us today. On the bicentenary of this eminent Victorian’s birth, Michael Glover, author of the idiosyncratic Ruskin Dictionary, explains why we should still be reading Ruskin closely in the twenty first century.