Zurbarán exhibition at the Louvre opens with the 1627 “Crucifixion” from the Art Institute of Chicago

The Surbarán exhibition at the Louvre opens with the "Crucifixion" that launched the painter's fame in Seville in 1627. The Dominicans of the monastery of San Pablo el Real commissioned 21 paintings from the young Surbarán, and this vast canvas, almost three metres high, became the chief of them. The Sevillians were so astonished that in 1629 the city council invited Surbarán to settle in Seville for good.

The Spanish painter and art historian Antonio Palomino wrote in 1724 that the picture was displayed in a dimly lit chapel behind a grille, and that everyone who saw it without knowing the truth took it for a sculpture.

The "Crucifixion" is normally kept at the Art Institute of Chicago, so Paris now offers a rare chance to see it in the flesh, and, you know, no reproduction conveys how the white body of Christ emerges from the absolutely black background.

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Congressman Raskin proposes Smithsonian exhibition on Trump's propaganda

Bronze Gallic bracelet of the 3rd or 2nd century BC from the Bucquoy necropolis

How silver became the basis of the Ming tax system and why its shortage destroyed the dynasty

The White Mouse cocktail from London's The Stafford hotel and the life of spy Nancy Wake