Leonardo's dreams, pick of the podcasts and female sculptors – the week in art

Inside the mind of a Renaissance genius, chats with Chris Ofili and the dramatic lives of great British sculptors – all in your weekly dispatch

Art podcast of the Week

The new Sculpting Lives podcast series explores and celebrates the dramatic lives of British female sculptors including Barbara Hepworth, Elisabeth Frink and Phyllida Barlow.

• Sculpting Lives

More art podcasts

Talk Art

Actor Russell Tovey – Alonso from Doctor Who if you’re my daughter – chats with gallerist Robert Diament and assorted guests in this amicable art world podcast.

• Talk Art with Russell Tovey and Robert Diament

The Serpentine Podcast: On General Ecology

This ambitious podcast series is as much about nature and society as art – but what do you expect from a gallery run by polymathic visionary Hans-Ulrich Obrist?

• The Serpentine Podcast

Dialogues

These podcasts made by the David Zwirner Gallery brings artists from Chris Ofili to Jeff Koons into two-way chats with critics and thinkers like Peter Schjeldahl, Emily Wilson and … Russell Tovey, Doctor Who’s Alonso, again.

• Dialogues

Inside the Mind of Leonardo da Vinci

... is quite a place to be, and this discussion with Martin Kemp and other experts is a chance to find out how the Renaissance genius thought and dreamt.

• Inside the Mind of Leonardo da Vinci

Image of the week

As shamelessly bawdy ex-Young British Artist Sarah Lucas thunders towards her 60s, she talked to us about knobby guys, life in metal-detecting country – and coping with all her hair falling out last year. Read more here.

What we learned

We toured the world’s best online art galleries …

… and museums …

… and discovered how street artists are responding to coronavirus

(Here’s a list of major Covid-19 cancellations so far)

Hard-partying ex-YBA Sarah Lucas talked about knobby guys, life in metal-detecting country – and coping with all her hair falling out last year

Asterix creator Albert Uderzo died at 92 …

… and Tom Holland described how his cheery comic-book parodies portrayed a world of joyful innocence in the aftermath of war

Ai Weiwei answered questions from readers and art world figures on creativity, protest and Chinese politics

Nick Cave opened his scrapbook of rarely seen photos and sketches, from the sacred to the profane

Photographer Martin Parr’s warts-and-all make-up ad for Gucci, featuring musician Dani Miller, had a brush with controversy

Epic photography by country star Kenny Rogers revealed the sinister side of America

The Royal College of Art faced a backlash over plans to hold degree shows online

Liam Wong told us how he makes his moody Tokyo photographs

Andrew Krivine showed us the best of his 40-year punk memorabilia collection

Black lives documented by New York’s photography pioneers Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop

Illustrator and mural artistSeanna Doonan explored Wakefield’s mining life

Richard Brooks asked who would lead the BBC on the other side of the virus crisis

For now behind closed doors, the National Gallery celebrates Titian – Love, Desire, Death

Ville Lenkkeri’s photograph conveyed his sorrow at cutting down a beloved tree from his childhood in Finland

Melbourne’s first feminist book store has been transformed into a modern family home

Cartoonist Simone Lia shared her apocalyptic visions

Masterpiece of the Week

Albrecht Dürer – Saint Jerome in His Study, 1514

The scholarly Saint Jerome works in contented isolation at home. He’s got his pet lion and dog slumbering in his comfortably furnished study among nicely scattered cushions, select leather-bound volumes, a stuffed letter rack and an hour glass in case of tight deadlines. His desk is neat and comes with a lectern that would be just right for a tablet computer. This idealised vision of working from home is a trope of Renaissance art. Other depictions of Saint Jerome by artists including Antonello da Messina and Domenico Ghirlandaio are similarly lavish in picturing the perfect study. Working from home may not feel this simple and tidy in reality, of course.

• National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh.

Don’t forget

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