We speak to our journalists in the two epicentres of the Covid-19 pandemic thus far: Anna Somers Cocks in Italy and Lisa Movius in China. We hear about their experiences of lockdown, the response of museums and galleries and the effect on the art community, as the two countries enter contrasting moments in the coronavirus crisis.

And we begin a new feature, turning the spotlight on works of art normally enjoyed by millions of visitors in museums across the world that are suddenly hanging unseen in empty galleries closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. In the first of the series, we asked the art historian and broadcaster Bendor Grosvenor to choose his "lonely work": Anthony van Dyck’s masterpiece Martin Ryckaert (about 1631), in the Prado Museum in Madrid, which closed indefinitely last week.

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