Three to see

Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan

See it by February 5th 2012

Daily 10am – 6pm
Fridays 10am – 9pm

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vinci-painter-at-the-court-of-milan
The National Gallery
Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN

All advance tickets are now sold out for this season’s biggest hit, however there is limited availability each day so be prepared to turn up when it’s still dark and queue. Why all the fuss? Only fifteen of Leonardo’s paintings survive of the twenty or so that he started and nine of them are in this collection alongside more than fifty of his extraordinary drawings. Marking the end of the medieval, paintings such as Musician and The Lady with an Ermine imbue the subjects with a luminescent stillness and display a more thoroughly articulated psychological and physiological reading than hitherto seen.There’s no Mona Lisa which doesn’t fall into Leonardo’s Milanese period, but you can’t have everything, if you did, where would you put it?

Gerhard Richter: Panorama

See it by January 8th 2012 Admission £12.70 Concessions £10.90

Sunday – Thursday, 10.00–18.00 Last admission at 17.15

Friday – Saturday, 10.00–22.00 (10.00–18.00 on Friday 23 and Saturday 31 December) Last admission at 21.15

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/gerhardrichter/default.shtm

Bankside

London SE1 9TG

020 7887 8888

Richter is der Grossvater of German modernist painting and this show is a major retrospective to coincide with the artist’s 80th birthday.Richter’s photorealist style is as controversial as is his subject matter, and reflects his early life under Nazi and then Communist rule as well as dealing with some of the more disruptive aspects of the last fifty years; the 15-part work October 18 1977 1988 is a series of paintings that features the Baader Meinhof group and September 2005 is a painting that depicts the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre. The exhibition also features his squeegee abstracts, landscapes and portraits.

The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons

See it by January 8th 2012 Admission £11 Concessions £9

Open 10a.m.-6p.m. and until 9p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays

National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London, WC2H 0HE

020 7306 0055 http://www.npg.org.uk

Taking us on an extraordinary pictorial journey through the very first age of female celebrity, the exhibition showcases the leading ladies of the 17th and 18th centuries in a sumptuous display of femininity and theatricality; Nell Gwyn, Kitty Clive, Hester Booth, Lavinia Fenton, Elizabeth Linley, Sarah Siddons, Mary Robinson and Dorothy Jordan can all be viewed in portraits by artists including Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, John Hoppner and James Gillray which allow us to reflect as much on our own perceptions of contemporary images of women, as on reading the pictorial codes of the past.