An intense and controversial restoration of the last great work by Leonardo da Vinci goes before the public Thursday at the Louvre Museum, revealing "The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne" in the full panoply of hues and detail painted by the Renaissance master 500 years ago.

The 18-month-long restoration of the painting that Leonardo labored on for 20 years until his death in 1519 will go a long way to raising "Saint Anne" to its place as one of the most influential Florentine paintings of its time and a step towards the high Renaissance of Michelangelo.

Ernest Hemingway shows a tenderness that wasn't part of his usual macho persona in a dozen unpublished letters that became publicly available Wednesday in a collection of the author's papers at the Kennedy presidential library.

In a letter to his friend Gianfranco Ivancich written in Cuba and dated February 1953, Hemingway wrote of euthanizing his cat "Uncle Willie" after it was hit by a car.

Paper replicas of Apple's iPad and iPhone are selling like hot cakes in China this year as millions prepare to honor their ancestors in an age-old annual festival that has taken on a modern twist.

Tomb Sweeping Day, which falls on April 4 this year, sees families remember their ancestors by laying out food at their grave sites and burning paper replicas of daily necessities such as clothes, money, cars and houses.

For the first time since his death in February, a painting by Spanish artist Antoni Tapies was sold Wednesday at an auction that also featured works by Fernando Botero and Pablo Picasso.

The 1956 grey and black abstract painting sold for 223,630 Euros ($298,443). It had an asking price of 190,000 Euros.

In a synagogue in northeast India, a group of men pray for the chance to "return home" to a country they have never seen and which their ancestors fled nearly 3,000 years ago.

"India is not our country," says Haniel Reuben, 72, one of the eldest members of a tiny community that claims to have descended from the Manasseh -- one of the biblical "lost tribes" of Israel exiled in 720 BC by Assyrian conquerors.

New York's gritty subway has got its sense of poetry back with the return of a popular program to bring verses to commuters.

The Metropolitan Transport Authority, which runs the underground system, announced it was restoring its Poetry in Motion initiative after a hiatus of four years.

Vesselina Kasarova's repertoire ranges from Donizetti to Wagner. Critics rave over her voice and her character depictions are the gold standard for young singers aspiring to opera stardom.

Asked recently if she would again become a singer from her present perspective at the top, she shrugged.

Hilton Kramer, the former chief art critic at The New York Times and founding editor of The New Criterion magazine, has died. He was 84.

Kramer's wife Esta said he had been suffering from a blood disease, and died early Tuesday. He had been in an assisted living facility in Harpswell, Maine.

A virtual adventure at sea with storms and battles, a new "jewel box" for Asian art and a high-tech building shaped like a bathtub: Amsterdam's landmark museums are getting facelifts to catapult them from their dusty pasts into the 21st century.

The makeover of three of the capital's most important museums, the Maritime Museum, the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum, has been hailed as the dawn of a "new cultural golden age" to attract the 12.2 million visitors to Amsterdam every year.

A rare watercolor study by Paul Cezanne believed lost and last seen in 1953 will be auctioned in New York City where it's expected to fetch up to $20 million.

It's being offered May 1 at Christie's.