From Jenny Saville’s gobsmacking show to a pomo celebration of Richard Rogers – the week in art

Saville paints beauty and terror, Watteau returns, a £2.5m Rubens gets an unfair drubbing and erotic art reveals itself – all in your weekly dispatch

Exhibition of the week

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting
A hugely impressive display of skill and imagination that proves Saville a tremendous painter of beauty, terror and everything in between. Read the review.
• National Portrait Gallery, London, until 7 September

Also showing

Abstract Erotic
How Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse and Alice Adams subverted the formal chill of 1960s minimalism with witty intrusions of desire.
• The Courtauld, London, until 14 September

Watteau
Subtle drawings by this wonderfully tender, sensual visionary of the rococo age.
• British Museum, London, until 14 September

Richard Rogers
The postmodern British architect is celebrated in the home of pre-modern architectural genius John Soane.
• Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, until 21 September

Daphne Wright
Irish artist Wright has created new sculptures in direct response to the Ashmolean Museum’s collection.
• Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, until 8 February

Image of the week

This is Samson and Delilah by Peter Paul Rubens. Or is it? Some commentators, such as art historian Euphrosyne Doxiadis, claim the National Gallery’s oil painting is a fake, calling it “a shoddy artefact, lacking the brilliance of my favourite European painter”. Our critic contends that the painting doesn’t look typical of Rubens for good reason: it is his passionate attempt to paint like someone else.

What we learned

William Kentridge’s vast sculptures are landing in Yorkshire

The crystal-covered artwork Van Gogh’s Chair couldn’t support the weight of one tourist

Photographer Taryn Simon captured the cat that made Trump a laughing stock

Daredevil motorcyclists and Italian bloodletting rituals are in contention for this year’s Jarman award

Elizabeth Peyton’s portrait of the Gallagher brothers is expected to reach £1.5m at auction

Christelle Oyiri gave herself horns and a tail for her plastic surgery inspired selfie sculptures

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral has been given Grade I-listed building status

A new show at the Getty Center in LA showcases 100 years of queer art, including a $3 bill

Masterpiece of the week

The Virgin Suckling the Infant Christ, about 1565-1575, by Titian

There is a simple heartfelt humanity to this painting of a mother breastfeeding her child that is typical of Titian, whose images of women range from unabashed nudes to intimate portraits yet are always loving, one way or another. By the time he painted this, in the final decade of his long life, he had seen and painted so much. He throws away big ambitions, watches this tender moment between mother and baby, and paints with soft, expressive reverence. Yet there’s another side to it: the composition echoes his rival Michelangelo, who had recently died. For decades these last surviving giants of the high Renaissance had looked at and tried to outdo one another, but here, perhaps, Titian pays tribute to Michelangelo as he breathes a prayer for them both.
• National Gallery, London

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