Bartholomeus Spranger, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

FINANCIAL TIMES
By Ariella Budick
'Jupiter and Antiope' (c1595-97), left, and 'Hercules and Omphale' (c1585)
NEW YORK---Imagine a 16th-century version of an adult website, with lithe bodies tangled in impossibly acrobatic poses, lissom limbs, lustrous flesh, supple skin, all elaborately arranged in dances of erotic abandon. Or don’t imagine it, but just wander over to the Metropolitan Museum and see the whole sensual shebang in the . . . well, not quite flesh, but almost. Bartholomeus Spranger, the painter whose seductive delights dazzled exacting patrons all over Europe before long ago tumbling into obscurity, is having his moment all over again. [link]