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Art historians have created a new app which allows users to roam around one of Florence’s oldest and most important churches, San Pier Maggiore, 240 years after it was demolished.

Ostrich feathers are often associated with glamorous women but this wasn’t always the case. In the sixteenth century, it was Europe’s men who spearheaded this trend. Now experts in Cambridge and London have brought this forgotten moment in fashion history back to life by recreating a lavish headdress.

Today, feathers are an extravagant accessory in fashion; 500 years ago, however, they were used to constitute culture, artistry, good health and even courage in battle. This unlikely material is now part of a project that promises to tell us more not only about what happened in the past, but also about how it felt to be there.

Rustic figurines of a resigned-looking Virgin clutching her child may have no obvious literary or artistic merit to us today. But understanding what they meant to the spiritual lives of their owners can offer a glimpse of the human hopes and fears that people have, for centuries, invested in inanimate objects.

A ten-year research and restoration project to save one of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s Renaissance masterpieces was rewarded with a major national accolade this week.

A team of experts has pieced together the architectural context of two treasures of Renaissance art in the National Gallery collection. ̽»¨Ö±²¥research behind the 3D-visualisation combines traditional and digital methods – and benefits from invaluable input from the local community.

An exhibition of early colour printing in Germany shines a light on the ways in which technology jump-started a revolution in image making. ̽»¨Ö±²¥British Museum show is curated by Dr Elizabeth Savage, whose research makes a radical contribution to an understanding of colour in woodcuts.

An exhibition of ‘treasured possessions’ from the 15th to the 18th centuries reveals how we first fell in love with shopping, and takes us back to an age when our belongings were made by hand and passed down through the generations.

Fashion conveys complex messages. ̽»¨Ö±²¥recreation of an outfit taken from one of an extraordinary series of Renaissance portraits reveals how one man made his mark on society. 

̽»¨Ö±²¥notion of the Renaissance as a ‘secular age’ is to be challenged by three ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of Cambridge researchers after securing €2.3m funding from the European Research Council.