There is a milky evanescence to this mesmerising portrait by British artist Sarah Ball, and the longer I stood in front of it, the more it was drawing me in. There is nothing conventional or normal about Emma. Look at the size of the head, the length and thickness of the white eyelashes, the texture of the hair, the clownish quality of her makeup, the uber plump lips. Her shimmery face is odd and beautiful, her eyes aloof and alluring. She looks fake but feels real, her gaze

Revered by the public, reviled by the art establishment and eventually sold at auction for almost £1m, the Mona Lisa of kitsch was painted by a rather obscure Russian-born artist who had emigrated to South Africa. The sitter of this portrait is Monika Sing-Lee, 17 at the time, who was working at Tretchikoff's uncle’s launderette. This highly idealised icon of oriental beauty is said to be the most reproduced fine art prints in the world. Her bizarrely luminescent complexion a

Barkley L. Hendricks mostly painted portraits, a genre that flourished during the Renaissance becoming the symbol of the sitter's prestige, wealth and power. The representation of power was however never central to Hendricks' work and he also vehemently rejected the label of political artist: "Anything a black person does in terms of the figure is put into a political category. My paintings were about people that were part of my life.” His iconic masterpiece Lawdy Mama intrig

Just like we love real people, I hereby decree that it is entirely acceptable to have feelings for the subject of a painting. For I have been on many dates with this impertinent young lad who, in turn, has consistently failed to reciprocate my attentions. Ah, unrequited love. Bronzino is one of the masters of Italian Mannerism, aka Renaissance on steroids, a style that is wedged between the High Renaissance and the Baroque (c. 1520 onwards). Mannerists moved away from the h