In this episode of The Bigger Picture, Dr Peter Tuka explores Jacques-Louis David’s monumental Neoclassical masterpiece The Intervention of the Sabine Women, now in the Louvre, Paris. From the legendary abduction of the Sabine women and the dramatic intervention of Hersilia, to David’s obsession withAncient Greek sculpture, heroic nudity, Roman history, and classical ideals of beauty, we unpack why this strange and spectacular painting became one of the defining images of French Neoclassicism. Along the way, we connect the paintingto the French Revolution, Robespierre, the Reign of Terror, David’s imprisonment, his political transformation, and his personal reconciliation with his wife, Charlotte. What begins as a bizarre battlefield full of naked warriors, anxious mothers, and inconveniently placed babies becomes a powerful meditation on conflict, forgiveness, family, and the urgent need for reconciliation in our own divided world.

Jacques-Louis David, The Intervention of the Sabine Women, 1799, oil on canvas, 385x522cm,Louvre, Paris

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In this episode of The Bigger Picture, Dr Peter Tuka explores Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ groundbreaking 1973 performance Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Outside, a defining work of Maintenance Art performed at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. Through the simple but radical act of scrubbing the museum’s entrance steps, Ukeles challenged the boundaries between art and everyday labour, artist and cleaner, public culture and invisible care work. This episode looks at how Ukeles transformed cleaning, motherhood, domestic chores, and low-status maintenance labour into powerful feminist performance art, asking why the work that keeps museums, homes, cities, and lives functioning is so often ignored. From her 1969 Manifesto for Maintenance Art to her performances inside and outside the museum, this is a story about conceptual art, second-wave feminism, care, class, labour, and the hidden systems that hold the world together.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Hartford Wash: Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Outside, 23 July 1973, Wadsword Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

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This episode of The Bigger Picture explores Edgar Degas’ The Rehearsal (c.1874), one of the most fascinating paintings of 19th-century French art, now in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow. Why does Degas fill the centre with empty floorboards, crop dancers in half, tilt the room, and make the whole composition look almost badly framed? In this episode, we look at how Degas used the visual language of early photography, snapshot composition, Japanese ukiyo-e prints, and the modern world of the Paris Opera to challenge traditional ideas of beauty, balance and perfection. From Nadar’s photography studio and the First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874, to ballet rehearsals, backstage labour, and the rise of modern ways of seeing, this episode asks why what looks awkward, accidental or unfinished might actually be the key to understanding Degas’ genius — and why The Rehearsal still feels strikingly contemporary today.

Edgar Degas, The Rehearsal, c.1874, oil on canvas, 58x84cm, The Burrell Collection, Glasgow

Kitagawa Utamaro, Two Women with a Baby who is Playing on the Floor, c.1793, woodblock print; ink and colour on paper, 52x 19cm, Met Museum, NY

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In this episode of The Bigger Picture, Dr Peter Tuka explores Mary Cassatt’s In the Loge (1878), a powerful Impressionist painting of modern Paris, theatre culture, and the politics of looking. Set inside a nineteenth-century opera box, Cassatt’s masterpiece opens a fascinating discussion of Haussmann’s Paris, the Palais Garnier, bourgeois society, spectatorship, the flâneur, Charles Baudelaire’s “painter of modern life,” andthe gendered experience of public life in the modern metropolis. Through a close visual analysis of Cassatt’s woman with opera glasses, and a comparison with Renoir’s The Theatre Box, this art history podcast episode examines how Impressionism captured everyday modern life while also challenging the male gaze, female passivity, and the expectation that women should be decorativeobjects on display. Perfect for listeners interested in Mary Cassatt, Impressionism, feminist art history, nineteenth-century Paris, women artists, modernity, visual culture, and the hidden stories behind famous paintings.

Mary Cassatt, In The Loge, 1878, oil on canvas, 81x66cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Theatre Box, 1874, oil on canvas, 80x63,5cm, Courtauld Gallery, London

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In this episode of The Bigger Picture, Dr Peter Tuka explores Édouard Manet’s Olympia, the scandalous 1863 painting that shocked the 1865 Paris Salon and became one of the key turning points of modern art. We decode why Manet’s nude was so controversial, how Olympia rewrites Titian’s Venus of Urbino, and why her direct gaze exposed the hypocrisy of high-society Paris. From the symbolism of the black cat, orchid, slipper, flowers, and maid, to the real women behind the canvas — Victorine Meurent and Laure — this art history podcast episode uncovers the story of modernism, realism, gender, race, class,prostitution, the female nude, and the viewer’s gaze in one of the most important paintings of the nineteenth century.

Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1963, oil on canvas, 130.5x190 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1534, oil on canvas, 119x165cm, Uffizi, Florence

In this episode of The Bigger Picture, Dr Peter Tuka explores Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass), one of the most important masterpieces of nineteenth-century French art and a landmark in the birth of modern art. Painted in 1863 and rejected by the Paris Salon, Manet’s famouspainting challenged the strict rules of the French Academy, the hierarchy of genres, academic finish, traditional perspective, and the polished ideals of official art. We look closely at the painting’s strange composition, visible brushwork, flat figures, references to Raphael, Titian, and the Old Masters, and its central role in the Salon des Refusés. More than a scandalous picnic scene, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe reveals how Manet transformed artistic tradition into something radically modern, opening the door to Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and the future of modernism in art.

Édouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 1863, oil on canvas, 208x264cm, Museé d’Orsay, Paris.

Marcantonio Raimondi (after Raphael), The Judgement of Paris, 1518/1520, 29x44cm, Art Institute of Chicago

Titian, The Pastoral Concert, 1509-1510, oil on canvas, 105x135cm, Musée de Louvre, Paris

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In this episode of The Bigger Picture, Dr Peter Tuka explores one of the most haunting masterpieces of Northern Renaissance art: Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece. Created for a monastery hospital treating victims of Saint Anthony’s Fire, this extraordinary polyptych transforms disease, suffering,faith, and salvation into an unforgettable visual drama. From the plague-ridden Crucifixion and the psychologically charged figures of Saint Sebastian, Saint Anthony, and John the Baptist, to the radiant Resurrection, the eerie Concert of Angels, the Nativity, Lucifer’s fading light, medicinal herbs, demonic temptations, and the terrifying beauty of spiritual healing, this art history podcast episode uncovers how Grünewald used shock, symbolism, Christian theology, Gothic emotion, and raw human pain to create an image of compassion for the sick and dying. A powerful journey through Renaissance painting,religious art, hospital history, ergotism, medieval spirituality, and the search for hope beyond the darkest night.

Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, 1512-1516, Oil and Tempera on Limewood Panel, Closed view: 3.76 m × 5.34 m (12.3 ft × 17.5 ft), Unterlinden Museum, Colmar

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In this episode of The Bigger Picture, Dr Peter Tukaexplores Masaccio’s The Holy Trinity, one of the most revolutionary works of Early Renaissance art. Discover how this groundbreaking fresco in Santa Maria Novella, Florence became the first great masterpiece of linear perspective, shaped by the mathematical ideas of Filippo Brunelleschi and the humanist spirit of the Italian Renaissance. From Renaissance art history,Christian symbolism, and memento mori imagery to Florence, perspective in art, and the relationship between faith, geometry, and illusion, this episode reveals why The Holy Trinity changed Western painting forever.

Masaccio, The Holy Trinity, c.1426-1428, fresco, 667x317cm, Santa Maria Novella, Florence

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In this episode of The Bigger Picture, Dr Peter Tuka explores Sandro Botticelli’s Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel, one of the most intriguing masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. This art history podcast episode examines the painting’s mysterious identity, its extraordinary 14th-century saint roundel attributed to Bartolommeo Bulgarini, and the deeper meanings behind Botticelli’s unusual composition. From Renaissance Florence, Medici patronage, and humanism to memento mori, Neo-Platonic philosophy, Gothic art, and the rise of naturalism, this episode unpacks how a single Florentineportrait can reveal the cultural, spiritual, and intellectual transformation of 15th-century Italy. If you are interested in Botticelli, Renaissance art, Old Master paintings, art analysis, visual symbolism, and the history of Western art, this episode offers a compelling deep dive into one of the most famous and enigmatic portraits ever sold at auction.

Sandro Botticelli, Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel, c.1480, tempera on poplar wood, 59x39cm, Private Collection

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In this episode of The Bigger Picture, Dr Peter Tuka explores Oleg Holosiy’s monumental 1990 painting Psychedelic Attack of the Blue Rabbits – a key work of the Ukrainian New Wave and a haunting, large-scale example of Neo-Expressionist painting shaped by Perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union. From Holosiy’s own writing (“Painting begins where the world ends”) to the artwork’s fever-dream imagery ofelectric-blue, humanoid rabbits, this art history podcast unpacks the painting’s politics, liminality, and metaphysical “inner space,” tracing connections to Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin’s On the Line of Fire, surrealist automatism, and the anxieties of transition in 1990s Ukraine. If you’re searching for a deep dive into Ukrainian contemporary art, Soviet and post-Soviet culture, Glasgow Museums hidden treasures, or the meaning behind Psychedelic Attack of the Blue Rabbits, this episode is your essential listening.

Oleg Holosiy, Psychedelic Attack of the Blue Rabbits, oil on canvas, 200x300cm, Glasgow Museums

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, On the Line of Fire, 1616, oil on canvas, 196x275cm, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg