Exhibition of the week
Rachel Whiteread: Internal Objects
The sculptor of the hidden spaces of our lives gets to grips with her ghosts.
Gagosian Grosvenor Hill, London, 12 April to 6 June.
Also showing
Gilbert and George: New Normal Pictures
Our most heroic living sculptors take on homelessness and laughing gas in the streets in their latest tragicomic pictures.
White Cube Mason’s Yard, London, 13 April to 8 May.
Francis Bacon and Peter Beard
A fascinating journey into the heart of darkness with Beard’s perturbing pictures of dead elephants that fascinated his painter friend, and Bacon’s extraordinary portrait of Beard.
Ordovas, London, 12 April to 16 July.
Robert Rauschenberg
Two groups of silkscreen paintings on metal called Night Shadows and Phantoms show the great American visionary regaining some of his early form in the 1990s.
Thaddaeus Ropac, London, until 31 July.
Luke Hannam: The Compass and the Rosary
Bright and dreamy paintings with broad splashes of seaside surrealism.
Anima Mundi, St Ives, 12 April to 22 May.
Image of the week
The Spanish government has imposed an export ban on this painting, attributed to José de Ribera, which had been due to be auctioned at a guide price of €1,500. Experts at the Prado museum believe it could actually be by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, making it worth between €50-€150m.
What we learned
The Spanish region of Fuendetodos is summoning Goya home
Eco-art activists Cooking Sections are fighting for the rights of salmon
Francis Bacon was triggered by dead elephants
Dutch police arrested a man over an £18m painting theft Richard Mosse’s “living maps” capture brutal damage to the Amazon
New doc Citizen Lane shows the dashed hopes of an Irish art dealer …
… and another new release explores the ideas of copies and originals
Netflix is aiming to solve the mystery history’s biggest art heist
East London’s River Lea is an undiscovered idyll
Karolina Ćwik’s camera offers an unflinching portrait of motherhood
Susan Kandel’s best photograph is a girl awaiting her first communion
Rewilding cities is helping the climate crisis – and human wellbeing
Women of Australian Impressionism are emerging from the shadows
The Great British Art Tour unearthed a peasant’s revolt, a Neapolitan Easter scene
Masterpiece of the week
Pieter de Hooch, c 1663, A Boy Bringing Bread
Sunlight catches freshly cleaned floor tiles, turns windows to molten gold and reveals an almost theatrical succession of architectural effects receding into the distance where a woman waits for her servant or son to deliver bread. We’re inside a fine Amsterdam house looking out, through its impressive courtyard, as the outside world arrives in the form of this crusty produce from the baker’s oven. The woman with a red skirt bends down almost reverently to take it. The boy too holds it proudly, tenderly. It is a moment of passing delicacy and beauty in the course of an ordinary day – or the Dutch golden age answer to Deliveroo.
At the Wallace Collection, London
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