Simple nudes, priceless fakes and riches from an emperor’s palace – the week in art

Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires
From the tulips and silks of the Ottoman court, back in time to the Emperor Constantine’s palace, this is a sumptuous and haunting mystery tour.
V&A South Kensington, London, 7 November to 9 May

Also showing

Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant
Two modern painters, one complex relationship in an exhibition that takes you to the heart of the early 20th century Bloomsbury Group.
Tate Britain, London, from 12 November

Ida Applebroog
Angry Birds of America, a series of animal images that updates Audubon for the Trump era, and naked portraits of people that celebrate human variety.
Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until 11 February

Glenn Brown
The superbly decadent contemporary painter takes on the luscious genius of Thomas Gainsborough.
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, until 18 April

Alexis Kyle Mitchell
An exhibition about health inequalities and the way people’s bodies are judged.
Site Gallery, Sheffield, until 21 March

Image of the week

The aficionados among you will immediately recognise this screenprint: Marilyn Monroe was recreated countless times with infinite variety by Andy Warhol. Only the very keenest cognoscente, however, will recognise that pop art’s king of reproduction has himself been reproduced here. Elaine Sturtevant’s Warhol Black Marilyn (2004) is just one example of a feedback loop the conceptual forger has created with artists such as Jasper Johns, Keith Haring and her beloved Warhol, by copying their work to such a degree that it makes us reflect on how meaning is created around art. Her exhibition is at Raven Row in London until 20 December.

What we learned

Comedian Andy Field drew a horse a day until he mastered it

Visiting art galleries is good for you but we do we need another self-optimisation prescription?

A rare Renaissance masterpiece hidden for 70 years could fetch £5m at auction

British modernist painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham is finally getting the recognition she deserves

CJ Reay is fighting the system with quilts

You can make great art by putting a traffic cone on your head

The Bloomsbury Group helped shape how we think about mental health – and illness

Art imitates life imitating art imitating life … if you consider Rocky art

Masterpiece of the week

The Virgin and Child by Giovanni Bellini, c1480-90

The Bellinis not only dominated Venetian art in the later 15th century but spanned east and west, linking Italy with Istanbul. Giovanni’s brother Gentile travelled to the capital of the Ottoman Empire and portrayed its Sultan – as seen in the V&A blockbuster Constantinople to Istanbul – as well as other places and people he saw in the eastern Mediterranean. Giovanni was more of a homebody but you couldn’t entirely avoid global influence in Venice, capital of a great trading empire, with its golden Byzantine mosaics in St Mark’s. Is there perhaps a hint of a Byzantine icon about this painting with its eerie spiritual calm and the subtly luxurious hanging behind the Virgin? You feel the air warming and vibrating around her, the stillness of those clouds, the rich veined purple marble of the parapet in front of her. Bellini makes you meditate with his music of colour.
National Gallery, London

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