Journal
The customs, the works, the films and the places that make European culture. By the Novars editors.
How to visit a museum without wearing yourself out
After an hour, every painting looks the same and your legs grow heavy. It is not a lack of culture, it is a lack of method. The regulars’ method comes...
Read the article
Recognising a Vermeer in three seconds
A window on the left, a silent interior, a blue more precious than gold: the master of Delft’s paintings are rare, and that is precisely what makes them so easy...
The skull, the dog, the lemon: hidden symbols in paintings
In old master painting, nothing is there by chance. Objects speak, and viewers of the time knew how to read them. A short glossary to rediscover this forgotten language.
What Impressionism really changed
A mocked painting, a sardonic critic and a handful of painters rejected by the Salon: in 1874, a group of artists unwittingly invented modern painting.
Six paintings to see once in your life in Paris
From the Louvre to the Orangerie, a walk through six masterpieces, with the story of each and the detail to look for when you stand in front of it.
The theft that made the Mona Lisa famous
One August morning in 1911, an Italian glazier took the painting off the wall and walked out with it hidden under his smock. For more than two years the whole...