The Royal Academy’s Treasures from Budapest: European Masterpieces from Leonardo to Schiele opens on Saturday and I went along for a sneak preview.

The stunning exhibition is composed of work from one of the finest art collections in Central Europe, The Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, along with loans from the Hungarian National Gallery. Many of the pieces were collected by the Esterházy family, who’s various generations developed the collected works.

The tremendous breath of work includes religious painting, mythological work, landscapes and contemporary masterpieces. Among the 200 works are paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Claude Monet, Egon Schiele, Rembrandt and Pablo Picasso, covering treasures from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.

Standing in front of a wall which sees Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Bridge at Argenteuil, and Monet’s Three Fishing Boats next to Hungarian artist Mihály Munkácsy’s Dusty Road II, curator Professor David Ekserdijan said:

“The relationships between artists most of us are very familiar with, such as Monet, Renoir, [Eduoard] Manet and [Camille] Pissarro, and the Hungarian artists will prove very fascinating for everybody.”

This statement sums the exhibition up to a tee. It’s a captivating mix of work by the Old Masters, latter-day European greats, and Hungarian artists who have incorporated the styles of these artists into their own work. For example, you only need to glance at Munkácsy’s Dusty Road II to see the J.M.W. Turner influences.

Highlights of the exhibition include the striking Peter Paul Rubens’ Mucius Scaevola before Lars Porsena, Schiele’s erotic Two Women Embracing, and detailed chalk sketches by Leonardo da Vinci. Arguably the greatest work, however, is Raphael’s Esterházy Madonna, a stunning example of Renaissance painting at its finest.

Treasures from Budapest: European Masterpieces from Leonardo to Schiele opens on Saturday until 12 Dec.

John Singer Sargent is one of the late-nineteenth century’s most celebrated portrait painters, but little was known of his earlier work in seascapes and coastal scenes – until now.

Sargent and the Sea at the Royal Academy of Arts provides a fascinating look at Sargent’s early work and his early stages of development as an artist.

During his youth, Sargent travelled widely, and this exhibition includes work from the artist on his travels aged just 18. By the age of 20, Sargent was already producing awe-inspiring work.

His 1876 seascapes capture his transatlantic crossing perfectly, especially the turbulent Atlantic Storm and the calm and seducing Atlantic Sunset.

A year later on a trip to Brittany, the young Sargent painted stunning coastal scenes, encapsulated by En Route Pour la Pêche (Setting Out to Fish). His terrific attention to detail on the figures in this beach scene shows early signs of his focus on portraiture later in life.

An extensive collection of detailed sketches allude to Singer’s fascination with figure and form, culminating in numerous paintings of local children on a trip to Capri in 1878.

Royal Academy curator Ann Dumas said: “We’re familiar with his highly successful work as a portraitist, so it’s very interesting to discover the extraordinarily talented and precocious artist he was in his earlier years.”

See Sargent and the Sea at the Royal Academy of Arts from 10 July to 26 September.

London’s iconic Tate Modern now looks even sweeter with a scale model made entirely of sugar -more than 70,000 sugar cubes in fact – unveiled today.

The extraordinary work by artist Brendan Jamison has been commissioned in conjunction with the London Festival of Architecture (19 Jun-4 Jul).

At a scale of 1:100, the Tate Modern’s glistening sugar tower is more than a metre tall and took three months to complete the detailed work.

Jamison has also created a scale model of the Richard Rogers-designed NEO Bankside residential development from a further 9,000 cubes.

You’ll be able to catch a glimpse of the models this weekend at the NEO Bankside Sales Pavilion on Hopton Street SE1. Kids will also have a chance to make their own sugar cube models with a special workshop on Saturday.

For more information on the stunning sugar cube models and the London Festival of Architecture visit www.lfa2010.org