Renaissance painters

The state's attorney office in Florence has launched a series of court cases invoking Italy's landmark cultural heritage code, which protects artistic treasures from disparaging and unauthorized commercial use.

An unprecedented exhibition opening on March 20 at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan reunites for the first time in over 450 years eight surviving panels of the Augustinian Altarpiece by the early Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, while possibly solving one of its enduring mysteries.

Among the artworks that were the subject of the trial was the Leonardo da Vinci painting “Salvator Mundi”

Leonardo da Vinci, the painter of the "Mona Lisa" and a symbol of the Renaissance, was only half-Italian, his mother a slave from the Caucasus, new research revealed on March 14.

Da Vinci's mother had long been thought a Tuscan peasant, but University of Naples professor Carlo Vecce, a specialist in the Old Master, believes the truth is more complicated.

Leonardo da Vinci is the star in a blockbuster retrospective that opened Oct. 24 at the Louvre museum in Paris to mark 500 years since the death of the Renaissance master.

Since its sale for a record $450 million, the whereabouts of the "Salvator Mundi," said to be painted by Leonardo da Vinci, has become one of the art world's greatest mysteries.

Butterflies flutter around centuries-old olive groves in Vinci, the Tuscan village where Leonardo da Vinci was born and honed his inventor skills as a child by studying the local flora and fauna.

Two women peruse a display case at the National Library of Greece, which recently inaugurated a tribute to the first Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci. The tribute at the library's new home at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center on Athens's southern coast comprises a series of events over 2019, marking the 500-year anniversary of the Italian polymath's death.

When the world's most expensive artwork ever sold at auction was purchased at a Christie's sale in November 2017, the art world was a little confused.

Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi is going to the new Louvre Abu Dhabi, the art gallery tweeted on Wednesday.

But there's still no public information on who purchased the painting at the record-setting auction in November, when the controversial artwork went for $450.3 million US at Christie's, making it the most expensive painting ever sold.