Sin, exhibition, National Gallery

To limit the spread of Covid-19, certain UK museums have decided to close. Those due to attend an event should contact their ticket provider for more information.

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Next spring the National Gallery will stage an exhibition about that most universal of ideas, sin. Whether it's eating a forbidden apple (or, more likely, a forbidden doughnut), or something much more scandalous, we can all understand what it means to give in to temptation. Art galleries across the world are full of depictions of transgression, and ideas about what happens to us in the hereafter.

The National Gallery's exhibition will look at notions of sin in Western art, from Hogarth to Tracy Emin. The free show will include Andy Warhol's Repent and Sin No More and works by Velázquez, Jan Steen and Holman Hunt. Also to go on display will be the gallery's newly acquired Venus and Cupid, by Lucas Cranach the Elder, in which Venus looks suspiciously like a noblewoman who has stripped naked in the woods. She stares out at us alluringly, wearing only her elaborate hat.

Another highlight must surely be Velázquez's The Immaculate Conception, a sumptuous work that sees the Virgin Mary floating above the Earth on a translucent moon, looking down over all mankind. The concept of sin is culturally universal and still very much with us today, a point this exhibition will try to highlight. But curator Joost Joustra hopes that the works on display will also help visitors confront their own very personal ideas of what sin is.