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The Renaissance portraits that adorn the walls of the world’s museums hold countless secrets: painted-over underdrawings, hidden self-portraits, even a giant skull designed to remind viewers of their mortality. Now, a new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City seeks to unmask yet another littl...

On the afternoon of January 2, 1565, an iceberg drifted down the harbor of Delfshaven, a fishing village in the Netherlands. According to the inscription on a 16th-century oil painting of the event, the block of ice measured nearly 20 feet tall and 230 feet wide—large enough to cut off the village’s access to the Ni...