Michael Palin's Quest for Artemisia

If you've an hour to spare over the holidays' then you could do worse than have a look at the sunny Italian backdrop's in the Michael 'art historian' Palin film, Quest for Artemisia.

It's like tucking yourself up in a big knitted blanket, popping on your slippers and settling down with a big, big soporific dish of white bread in warm milk mixed with sugar and calpol and valium and lots and lots of golden syrup.  Yup, really.

This despite Artemisia Gentileschi having one of the most explosively lived-right-on-the-edge-and-to-the-full, mould-breaking, astonishing, vibrant, stratospherically talented, creative, intelligent, raw, brutal, visceral, brave lives of anyone who's ever lived on the planet, during some of the most amazing times is could possibly be to be alive in, set in some of the most incredible places on earth. 

Thanks, Michael.  Thanks BBC.  Thanks for taking art history seriously, yet again.

Read a quick blog about Artemisia Gentileschi and the theme of Judith HERE.