Episode 19: What makes us look twice at certain works of historic art? Is it their iconic status over the centuries, the stories that they tell - or just the sheer beauty of their creation? In this episode, art historian and specialist guide Freya Middleton takes a deep dive into Botticelli's “Spring”.

Episode 17: Yayoi Kusama is the world's most successful female artist, and at the time of writing is still breaking the internet at age 90. We probably all know and love her joyous, polka-dotted artworks: but what makes them more than a selfie opportunity? In this episode, Dr Nick Gordon charts the life and career trajectories of Yayoi Kusama, and makes the case for the skill and insight needed to move the needle on a viewer's emotional experience - as Kusama's work so often does.

Episode 16: In this episode, Dr Nick Gordon explains the technical brilliance of Jan van Eyck, with reference to his painting of the Madonna of Chancellor Rolin. Dated to 1435 and now in the Louvre, it exemplifies van Eyck's use of oil as a medium for painting, as well as his various approaches to pictorial perspective and their impact on the way we 'read' his works.

Episode 15: Tawaraya Sotatsu's sublime "Matsushima" screens, now in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art in Washington DC, probably don't represent the iconic pine-clad islands of Matsushima Bay in the Tohoku region. But they do represent a true achievement of seventeenth-century Japanese painting, and of a late nineteenth-century American interest in tracing its earliest and anonymous origins.

Episode 14: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, the artist simply known now as Caravaggio, is someone whose work polarises. While some viewers respond to the gritty 'realness' of the artist's approach to the religious scenes he paints, others find his theatricality overwhelming or somewhat staged. In this episode, we look at his psychological masterpiece, “The Sacrifice of Isaac.”

Episode 13: In this episode, Dr Nick Gordon introduces a giant twelfth-century reliquary, designed for Cologne Cathedral to hold the relics of the Three Wise Men. It's a triumph of medieval metalwork attributed to Nicholas of Verdun, a goldsmith whose mastery of technique indicates the extraordinary breadth of medieval craft and decorative arts.

Episode 12: In this episode, encounter Kyoto’s Ryōan-ji, one of the world’s most famous rock gardens and a window onto Zen Buddhism’s influence on the art forms of tea ceremony, ceramics, calligraphy and garden design.

Episode 11: In this episode, Dr Kathleen Olive introduces us to a seventeenth-century tea bowl that exemplifies both the qualities of wabi sabi and the technique of raku.

Episode 9: Dr Kathleen Olive discuss Rosalba Carriera’s remarkable approach to portraiture using oil pastels, a medium she popularised in the eighteenth century.

Episode 9: Dr Kathleen Olive and Dr Nick Gordon discuss Michelangelo’s David and the philosophies it embodies.

Episode 8: Dr Kathleen Olive and Dr Nick Gordon compare two masterworks in different media, to explore the dramatic effects on modern art of West meeting East.

Episode 7: Dr Kathleen Olive takes you into Artemisia Gentilieschi’s spectacular Judith slaying Holofernes in Naples’ Capodimonte Museum.

Episode 5: Kathleen Olive explores Ogata Kōrin’s magnificent iris screens, a highlight of Tokyo’s Nezu Museum and a towering achievement of the Rinpa School of art.