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The Valois Tapestries are a series of eight tapestries depicting festivities or 'magnificences' at the Court of France in the second half of the 16th century. The tapestries were worked in the Spanish Netherlands, probably in Brussels or Antwerp, shortly after 1580.

Stephanie Merrit @thestephmerritt is an English critic and feature writer who has contributed to various publications including The Times, The Daily Telegraph, the New Statesman, New Humanist and Die Welt. She was Deputy Literary Editor of The Observer from 1998 to 2005 and currently writes for The Observer and The Guardian, in addition to writing novels.

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Greg Jenner is the historical consultant to Horrible Histories and is the author of A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Everyday Life.

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The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth nearly 70 metres (230 ft) long and 50 centimetres (20 in) tall, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England concerning William, Duke of Normandy, and Harold, Earl of Wessex, later King of England, and culminating in the Battle of Hastings.

Joe Whitlock Blundell has been Design and Production Director of The Folio Society for over 20 years, responsible for all aspects of the books’ appearance: typographic design, art direction, choice of materials, and manufacturing quality. In this capacity he has seen well over 1,000 different titles into print. He is also a photographer with a number of books and one-man exhibitions to his name.

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The Kiss was painted by the Austrian Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt between 1907 and 1908, the highpoint of his "Golden Period", when he painted a number of works in a similar gilded style. A perfect square, the canvas depicts a couple embracing, their bodies entwined in elaborate robes decorated in a style influenced by both linear constructs of the contemporary Art Nouveau style and the organic forms of the earlier Arts and Crafts movement. The work is composed of oil paint with applied layers of gold leaf, an aspect that gives its strikingly modern, yet evocative appearance. The painting is now in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere museum in the Belvedere palace, Vienna, and is widely considered a masterpiece of the early modern period. It is a symbol of Vienna Jugendstil—Viennese Art Nouveau—and is considered Klimt's most popular work.

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Michael Scott @drmichaelcscott is an Associate Professor in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick, author of several books on ancient Greek and Roman society, and has written and presented a range of documentaries for National Geographic, History Channel, ITV and the BBC.

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Sir Stanley Spencer (30 June 1891 – 14 December 1959) was an English painter.[Shortly after leaving the Slade School of Art, Spencer became well known for his paintings depicting Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, the small village beside the River Thames where he was born and spent much of his life. Spencer referred to Cookham as "a village in Heaven" and in his biblical scenes, fellow-villagers are shown as their Gospel counterparts. Spencer was skilled at organising multi-figure compositions such as in his large paintings for the Sandham Memorial Chapel and the Shipbuilding on the Clyde series, the former being a World War One memorial while the latter was a commission for the War Artists' Advisory Committee during World War Two. As his career progressed Spencer often produced landscapes for commercial necessity and the intensity of his early visionary years diminished somewhat while elements of eccentricity came more to the fore. Although his compositions became more claustrophobic and his use of colour less vivid he maintained an attention to detail in his paintings akin to that of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Robin Ince @robinince is an English comedian, actor and writer. He is best known for presenting the BBC radio show The Infinite Monkey Cage with physicist Brian Cox.

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Watch Janina's new 3-part series, An Art Lovers Guide starting on BBC Four from 1st May at 9pm. Watch on iPlayer here. With sumptuous palaces, exquisite artworks and stunning architecture, every great city offers a dizzying multitude of artistic highlights. In the series, Dr Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke take us on three cultural city breaks, hunting for off-the-beaten-track artistic treats - and finding new ways of enjoying some very famous sights.

The Night Watch, is a 1642 painting by Rembrandt van Rijn. It is in the collection of the Amsterdam Museum but is prominently displayed in the Rijksmuseum as the best known painting in its collection. The Night Watch is one of the most famous Dutch Golden Age paintings and is window 16 in the Canon of Amsterdam.

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Lucas Cranach the Elder (c. 1472 – 16 October 1553) was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is known for his portraits, both of German princes and those of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, whose cause he embraced with enthusiasm, becoming a close friend of Martin Luther. He also painted religious subjects, first in the Catholic tradition, and later trying to find new ways of conveying Lutheran religious concerns in art. He continued throughout his career to paint nude subjects drawn from mythology and religion. He had a large workshop and many works exist in different versions; his son Lucas Cranach the Younger, and others, continued to create versions of his father's works for decades after his death. Lucas Cranach the Elder has been considered the most successful German artist of his time.

Peter Stanford is a writer, biographer, journalist, and broadcaster. Peter’s new book, Martin Luther: Catholic Dissident is out now.

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Marc Canham @marc_canham is a composer whose work spans film, video games, and art. His compositions have been remixed and re-interpreted by UNKLE, Amon Tobin, and Diplo, and he has also worked with artists such as Nathan Johnson, Philip Glass, Iggy Pop, Paul Hartnoll, and Baaba Maal.

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting one of the first recognised purely abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated at Grekov Odessa Art school. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat—Kandinsky began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.

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