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    Claudia Pritchard

    Piero della Francesca's The Resurrection (c. 1460) is in the collection of the Museo Civico, Sansepolcro. Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images.

    How 'the best picture in the world' was saved from destruction by a British army officer refused to follow his orders

    Claudia Pritchard on the extraordinary tale of how Piero della Francesca’s 1460s fresco 'The Resurrection' was saved.

    • A costly slumber: betrayed by Delilah, a sleeping Samson lies limp as his tresses are trimmed in Peter Paul Rubens’s Samson and Delilah, 1609, the Philistine soldiers gathering in the doorway a sign of his inevitable capture once shorn of his superhuman strength. Credit: Alamy

      Eyes wide shut: The art of sleeping

      Sleep takes many shapes in art, whether sensual or drunken, deathly or full of nightmares, but it is rarely peaceful. Even slumbering babies can convey anxiety, discovers Claudia Pritchard.

      By Claudia Pritchard Published 9 December 24

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