frescoes for the Sistine Chapel with both the performance structure and composition of the celebrated Renaissance polyphonic work, the Miserere mei. He suggested that the latter work was carefully crafted as a "soundtrack" to the former, and that the two, experienced together, were intended to comprise a single artistic whole. Grovier has written extensively on leading contemporary artists, notably the Irish-American abstract painter Sean Scully and the American painter Cy Twombly. Grovier's articles on contemporary art are often preoccupied with situating the visual achievement of the artist concerned in its broader literary and cultural context. In an article on Twombly's 2009 exhibition The Rose (TLS, 1 May 2009), he coined the term "synphrasis" (from the Greek, meaning "speaking with", "uttering together") to describe the merging of visual and verbal art into a single work (for example, Twombly's incorporating lines of verse from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke's poem Les Roses (1924) onto the surface of his paintings, so that word and image become one) - a term which has subsequently been adopted into Byzantine studies. Grovier's survey of contemporary art, 100 Works of Art That Will Define Our Age, is published by Thames & Hudson press in the UK, Thames & Hudson/W. W. Norton & Company in the United States, the Prestel imprint of Random House publishers in Germany (under the title Art Will Write the Story: The 100 Most Important Works of Our Time), and Ludion publishers in the Netherlands (under the title 100 Masterpieces of Our Time). The book goes in search of those works of art from 1989 to the present that have made the most enduring cultural and emotional impact. It features paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, performances, and video pieces from the era's most influential artists including Ai Weiwei, Banksy, Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Lucian Freud, Mona Hatoum, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Paula Rego, Gerhard Richter, Sean Scully, Cy Twombly, and Kara Walker. A subsequent overview, Art Since 1989, was published in November 2015 as part of Thames & Hudson's World of Art series. Works A lens in the palm (2008) Carcanet Press, Oxford Poets The Gaol: The Story of Newgate – London's most notorious prison (2009) John Murray (publisher), Hodder Headline The Sleepwalker at Sea (2011) Carcanet Press, Oxford Poets Scully: Luz Del Sur (2012), catalogue text, TF Editores Sean Scully: Doric (2012), catalogue text, Oliver Wood Liliane Tomasko: Vestige (September 2013), catalogue text, Timothy