Two of Titian’s poesie: ‘The Rape of Europa’, (c. 1560–2), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (above) and ‘Danae Receiving the Shower of Gold’, (1553), Prado, Madrid (below)

Diego Velázquez, ‘The Spinners or The Fable of Arachne’, (c. 1655–60), Prado, Madrid

Titian, ‘Portrait of King Philip II’, (1551), Prado, Madrid

Sir Joshua Reynolds P.R.A., ‘Portrait of Louis-Philippe-Joseph d’Orléans, Duke of Chartres, later Duke of Orléans’, (1779), Musée Condé, Chantilly (above); The Palais-Royal, Paris (below)

The Picture Gallery at Attingham Park, Shrewsbury, Shropshire (above); Cobham Hall, Cobham, Kent (below)

Art historian Bernard Berenson at his home outside Florence, Villa I Tatti, 1903

John Singer Sargent, ‘Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner’, (1888), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

The courtyard of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Massachusetts