Japan’s floating world, Britain’s lakes of paint and California’s sculpted light – the week in art

Also, a newly restored first world war masterpiece and a 400-year-old portrait of one of the world’s first professional female artists – all in your weekly dispatch

Exhibition of the week

Japan: Myths to Manga
Something genuinely innovative – a proper art historical show for the kids, from the floating world to modern manga.
• Young V&A, London, from 14 October

Also showing

Alberta Whittle
Whittle releases more images and ideas from her apparently limitless imagination.
• Modern Institute, Glasgow, until 11 November

La Serenissima
Lose yourself in drawings of 18th-century Venice by Canaletto and his contemporaries.
• Courtauld Gallery, London, 14 October to 11 February

Ian Davenport
New works by that rarest of beings, a serious British abstract painter.
• Waddington Custot, London, until 11 November

Robert Irwin and Mary Corse
Blow your mind with vintage California light art.
• Pace, London, until 11 November

Image of the week

Enormous in scale – it is over six metres wide – Gassed, by John Singer Sargent, depicts lines of soldiers, blinded by mustard gas, picking their way through a crowded battlefield, each with a hand on the shoulder of the man in front. The era-defining artwork has been newly restored and will be going on display at the IWM London on 10 November.

What we learned

Photography has been deepfaking us since the 1800s

Afrobeats star Mr Eazi has turned his latest album into an art show

Madrid’s Prado museum shows how images shaped Jewish-Christian relationships

Artist Nicole Eisenman prefers grappling with paint than isms

El Anatsui has made gleaming miracles from rubbish at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall

Hiroshi Sugimoto brings the dead back to disturbing life at his new London show

Frieze art fair is hoping to write women back into the story of art

Scientists have found clues to the Parthenon marbles’ original bright colours

AI has queasily interpreted the landscapes of Capability Brown

Masterpiece of the week

Portrait of the artist Sofonisba Anguissola by Anthony van Dyck, 1624

This portrait of a 96-year-old woman was once misidentified as one of Van Dyck’s many paintings of the British aristocracy. But his original drawing in the British Museum, dated 12 July 1624, reveals who it really depicts – and makes this a precious document of one of the first professional female artists. Sofonisba Anguissola was born in Cremona, Italy, to upper-class parents who decided all their daughters should have an art education. She proved the most gifted, and painted a Renaissance masterpiece, The Game of Chess, when she was in her 20s. She went on to impress Michelangelo and be celebrated in the second edition of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists. Here this renowned portrait painter poses for a fan who sought her out.
• Knole, Kent, National Trust

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