Divine Bodies

Promotion image for Kanye West's The Passion, photograph by David LaChapelle

Courtesy of Robilant + Voena, London

Art Fund curatorial trainee Philippa Stephenson has spent the last year exploring the Old Master collections of the Laing, Shipley and Hatton galleries to create a celebration of figure painting that brings together work from pre-19th-century Europe with contemporary examples.

She cites Joachim Wtewael’s The Temptation of Adam and Eve (1614) as an inspiring example from Shipley Art Gallery’s collection. These paintings will be displayed with important Old Master loans.

Contemporary works from Cindy Sherman, John Currin and others will demonstrate what Stephenson calls the recent ’re-embracing of the figure and religion’.