Many artists paint what they see. Max painted what he couldn't see. He looked at a floorboard and saw a forest. He looked at a grain silo and saw a monster.

Leonardo didn’t compartmentalise his experiments. For example, before him, only apothecaries created fragrances which were not meant to be put directly on to the skin.

Not only is her smile strange, just about everything about her is strange.

Leonardo did not give this, or any other of his paintings, a title. He simply said it is of a Florentine lady.

Before we dive into the nitty gritty of what lies behind the painting, it never hurts to point out that the first people to see Mona Lisa outside Italy lived in Amboise in the beautiful Loire Valley.

A Photographic exhibition by Mark Playle

Max Ernst, the French Surrealist, died on his birthday, 1 April 1976. He loved the irony. It was, you might say, surreal.

Its rather ugly plinth detracts from this wonderful work of art. It looks rather forlorn. Plonked down in a rather unlovely street. No wonder the half-man, half-bird looks as if it is preparing to take off.

For the last hundred and fifty years or so, visitors to this ancient and beautiful church have pondered over a sculpture of ‘the drowned woman’. Now, thanks to Anna Baydova’s awe inspiring, meticulous research they ponder no more.