Its a preposterous act of hubris, isn’t it? Pairing large scale video installations by American artist Bill Viola with drawings by Michelangelo can’t possibly illuminate our experience of either art form; or can it?

The most touching tribute to the relationship between two giants of early 20^th century art, Gustav Klimt and the much younger Egon Schiele, hangs in the first room of this fascinating exhibition at the Royal Academy  – Schiele’s poster for the 49th Secessionist exhibition in 1918. It shows a group of artists around a table, an empty chair at one end – that of Klimt, who had died of pneumonia in February.

Architecture is notoriously difficult to present in an accessible way and this survey of Italian architect Renzo Piano, who gave London the Shard, does not solve the problem. With 16 tables arranged in rows over two rooms, the Royal Academy show looks more like a busy office or a reading room than an exhibition. 

This weekend the Royal Academy (R.A) celebrates its 250th anniversary with the opening of 6 Burlington Gardens (main picture), duly refurbished for the occasion. When it was dirty the Palladian facade felt coldly overbearing, but cleaning it has highlighted the bands of sandstone and brown marble columns that lend warmth to the Portland stone. Originally built in the garden of Burlington House as the HQ for the University of London, this Victorian edifice turns out to be rather handsome. 

Titian! Mantegna!  Rubens! Dürer! Veronese! Van Dyck! Raphael! Velazquez! About 140 works which were once part of Charles I’s 2,000-strong collection are reunited in a sumptuous collaboration between the Royal Academy and the Royal Collection. It is a marvellous selection covering the 15th to the 17th centuries, the Northern and Southern Renaissance and the baroque.

It seems they’re having trouble with the lights. Thirty-five past five and they’re not yet on. “Typical,” laughs a woman, surveying the huddle of hi-vis chaperones. Palm fronds wave in the wind, suits leave work. St James’s Square slowly fills with people. The huddle of technicians breaks up and in a short moment, candy coloured bulbs strung in rainbow belts between plane trees light up and everyone goes “Oooooh” and gets out their phone.

Dedicated to a foundation stone of western artistic training, this exhibition attempts a celebratory note as the Royal Academy approaches its 250^th anniversary. But if the printed guide handed to visitors offers a detailed overview of working from life, the exhibition itself is a far flimsier construction that never really establishes the purpose of a practice that it simultaneously wants us to believe is thriving today.

A 19th-century silver and wood pot in which to make chocolate, pertly graceful; 17th-century blue and white Delftware; a Chinese calligraphy panel; a 19th-century carved wooden god from the Ivory Coast; a bronze and gold earth goddess from South-East Asia. These are but a tiny sampling from the multitude of objects with which Matisse surrounded himself in his studio(s).

Michelangelo's Taddei tondo, which depicts the Madonna and Child with the Infant St John in a rocky landscape, is the only Michelangelo marble in Britain. Currently one of the stars of the National Gallery's Michelangelo & Sebastiano show, it is also one of the greatest treasures of the Royal Academy's permanent collection, and is the subject of my new book.

It may be a cliché to say that this is a “timely” exhibition, but America After the Fall invites irresistible parallels with Trump’s America of today.