Examine geometric and "organic" shapes in painting and sculpture and the crucial relationship of figure to ground and mass to space. Then, explore the illusionistic use of shading, shadows, and overlapping shapes in Caravaggio's and Friedrich's works, and the compositional power of shapes in paintings such as Matisse's "Dance" and Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam".

Across the centuries, self-portraits fascinatingly reveal the changing role of the artist. Follow this progression, from Renaissance painters subtly placing themselves within large compositions, to self-portraiture's emergence as a major form of self-revelation, noting many dramatic and colorful traditions within the form.

After drawing a picture of her cat, a young girl searches for the perfect place to hang her masterpiece.

Boston painter Claire Roth has survived financially by painting reproductions, so when influential gallery owner Aiden Markel arrives with a bizarre proposal--her own show if she will forge a copy of a Degas, one of the pictures stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum--she says yes. As she works, Claire and Aiden become lovers, but she doesn't tell him about her discovery that the stolen Degas is itself a copy. This knowledge is Claire's lifeline...

Travel back in time to discover works of art that have vanished from the record, as well as those that went missing and have since been reclaimed or recovered. From the treasures of Tutankhamun to the altarpiece of Ghent, a missing Fabergé egg, and Vincent van Gogh's majestic Sunset at Montmajour, numerous masterpieces have disappeared throughout history as a result of theft, looting, natural catastrophe, or conflict... And some have resurfaced decades...

"Douglas Rigby, attorney-at-law, is bankrupt. He's just sunk his last $200,000-a clandestine "loan" from his last remaining client, former bigshot TV exec Glenn Haskill-into a cocaine deal gone wrong. The lesson? Never trust anyone else with the dirty work. Desperate to get back on top, Rigby formulates an art forgery scheme involving one of Glenn's priceless paintings, a victimless crime. But for Rigby to pull this one off, he'll need to negotiate...

In 2005, the sculptor Joel Shapiro was invited by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris to participate in their project series titled 'Correspondences'. The aim of 'Correspondences' is to achieve new insights into the complexity of art through confronting some of the museum's 19th century masterpieces with ambitious contemporary works. Shapiro initially felt that a wax figure of a dancer by Degas would be an appropriate match for one of his own figures, but...