The Celebrity Traitors show has taken the UK by storm this autumn. With a stellar, truly all-star cast and a winning format, the show has had humour, intrigue and plenty of drama. And all of this has inspired many online memes. I started to wonder: what are the art or museum equivalents of these? So let’s go!

Host Claudia Winkleman has become iconic due to her Traitors fashion. Every outfit suits the show’s themes and fits the Scottish castle location.

Her angular fringe and long fashion lines remind me a lot of portraits by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. With their elongated features, his early 20th-century portraits are often seen as the first paintings of ‘the modern woman’.

The first meme from the show was from the very first episode, when Alan Carr (among others) was chosen as a traitor. He donned the green cloak and carried a lamp, and a meme was born.

The use of light and shade reminds me a lot of the dramatic artworks of Joseph Wright of Derby. Many of his Enlightenment-era paintings focus on people undertaking scientific or artistic acts, reflecting the period when science and philosophy became more important as a way to organise society and government. This artwork - Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight - dates from 1765 and is in the collection of the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

Also: Joseph Wright of Derby is the focus of a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London which opens this week.

The next big meme from the show was Tom Daley giving side-eye to Kate Garraway. He suspected her and was not afraid to show it! This reminds me of two famous artistic side-eyes, centuries apart.

The first is The Card Sharp with the Ace of Diamonds from the 1630s by French artist Georges de La Tour. It is in the Louvre, and shows three card players tricking a fourth player. Through analysis of her clothing, the woman with the side-eye is likely a courtesan, as pearls were traditionally a signifier of a woman being a sex-worker.

Another famous side-eye is seen in this photograph from 1957. Sophia Loren looks at Jayne Mansfield at a dinner party welcoming Loren to Hollywood. This was captured by several photographers and published in newspapers around the world, albeit with censorship in some countries.

As a tabloid image, the photographer has been framed as Sophia Loren passing judgement on Jayne Mansfield, playing up a rivalry between the two actresses. Loren herself denies this and says she was simply worried about Mansfield spilling out of her dress. She has always denied any requests to sign her autograph on the photograph.

Staying with Tom Daley, his promotional image in the show showed him showering. This reminded me of the lovely fact that his swimming (diving) trunks from the 2012 Olympic Games are now part of the collection of the London Museum.

Designed by Stella McCartney for Adidas, they were added to the museum’s collection shortly after the Olympics. Within a year, they were displayed at the museum, along with personal memories of athletes and volunteers from the Games.

Rugby player Joe Marler appeared one evening swaddled in a pink blanket. This brings to mind many artworks featuring (what used to be known as) millennial pink.

I chose this painting Blossoms, by 19th-century artist Albert Joseph Moore, which is part of the collection of Tate Britain. Like this, Moore’s artworks often show women wearing long, draping, flowing clothes and are set against classical backgrounds.

He was born in York in 1841. He was the 13th of 14 siblings - his father and several of his brothers were also artists.

I could dedicate a whole newsletter to Celia Imrie and her time on the Traitors. It’s so gratifying to see people fall in love with an actress whom I’ve enjoyed for decades, especially in anything she did with Victoria Wood. For now, I’ve chosen the moment when she farted from nervousness.

To find a corresponding artwork was not so simple - I didn’t want to suggest any subject was flatulent. In the end, I chose this portrait of an old woman by 17th-century Flemish artist Jacob Jordaens, mostly for her similarly self-satisfied look. It is on display at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels.

Thank you for reading + until next time,