Private View

Behind universally admired works of art - THE LAUGHING CAVALIER by Hals, THE BIRTH OF VENUS by Botticelli, THE THINKER by Rodin, and many more - are the artists themselves, whose lesser-known eccentricities are revealed in PRIVATE VIEW. Here is Fra Filippo Lippi, a friar who had to be locked in a room by the Pope in order to keep him at the easel and away from the bedroom. William Blake, who talked to the dead - and Theodore Gericault, who brought the dead home with him to use as unpaid models. Here is Rembrandt, who not only owned a monkey himself, but once painted a similar creature into a patron's family portrait. And of course the swaggering Michelangelo, who as a child recommended his 'perfect' services 'in all humility' to the Duke of Milan...