Cathy's Art Diary

Wonderful exhibition at the British Museum examining devotional objects from medieval Europe in particular reliquaries. It was like falling into a jewel box! I liked the fact it put the objects in context but also acknowledged them as beautiful and sometimes ground breaking objects. Having done a course at the Courtauld earlier this year on early Christian images it was wonderful to see the early items and see how iconography developed. In amongst the gold there were some wonderfully touching items such as St Cuthbert’s personal travelling altar, a really direct connection to the saint. However my favourite items have to be the reliquary for the Holy Thorn with tiny gold figures rising from their graves on the bottom and small gold apostles up the edge. Reviews Times Guardian Daily Telegraph Evening Standard

Exhibition at the Louvre of early Renaissance drawings and incunabula from the collection of Baron Edmond de Rothschild. I found this an confusing exhibition but this wasn’t helped by the fact we came in from the wrong end and did it backwards! The idea was to show how printing developed in Italy and how this was influenced by drawing. However the exhibition was dominated by a fantastic model book bringing together wonderful architectural fantasies and pictures by the Master of the Soane Album. The printing elements began with the wonderful “Battle of the Naked Men” by the Pollaiolo brothers and continued with a room of small early etchings. There were also some lovely drawings such as a boy in turban by Gozzoli and Gaddi’s drawings for his frescos at St Croce but they didn’t seem to fit with the theme.

Interesting exhibition at the Pompidou Centre which looking at how new media like photography and film influenced the work of Edvard Munch. The early rooms looked at how Munch set about reproducing his work. It looked at a series of themes which he revisited many times in his left. The first two rooms seemed almost identical but were the same hang of dfferent versions of about 6 works. There were then rooms on film and a wonderful picture called “Workers on their way home” which took a cinematic approach to a group of workers walking towards you. The whole exhibition was dotted with photographs and film taken by Munch to show how he used the new forms. I have to be critical of the way the exhibition was hung and used. The rooms were quite small and there were large groups of school children being lectured to in there. At times a group would practically fill a room and made it very difficult for other people to view the works. I knew very little about this artist and came away better i

Small exhibition of illuminated manuscripts for the museums own collection at the Louvre in Paris. It was arranged over 2 rooms which almost displayed different worlds. The first room was the early work and showed a detailed medieval world with wonderful insights such as a woman chasing a fox which had stolen a chicken. It included wonderful works by Jean Fouquet. The second room was the Renaissance world with larger pictures looking at classical motifs and perspective. Some pictures were full page illustrations. There was a nice section on Flemish works as well.

Beautiful exhibition looking at the work of Fra Angelico and his contemporaries at the Musee Jacquemart Andre in Paris. The exhibition included about 30 panels by Fra Angelica alongside painters who influenced his work, such as his teacher Lorenzo Monaco, Masolino and Paolo Uccello, as well as artists that he inspired, such as Filippo Lippi and Zanobi Strozzi. It really was a vision of the use of light and was a real chocolate box for the eyes. I hadn’t realised Fra Angelico and also been an illuminator so was fascinated to see his works on paper. I fell heavily for an altarpiece by Baldovinetti with the most beautiful St Julian. An added extra was that you could buy the tape tour as a phone app which means I can still refer to it, look at the pictures and zoom into particular sections of pictures to study them further.

Talk by Dillian Gordon to coincide with the publication of a new National Gallery catalogue of ‘The Italian paintings Before 1400' at the National Gallery ( http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk ). This was a fascinating talk which looked at new information which had emerged since the last catalogue was published in 1988. It looked at both scientific discoveries as well as new discoveries of different elements of altarpieces. There was almost too much information to take in including new ideas on Duccios Maesta and Margarito of Arezzo picture in the gallery. One new thing I learnt was that crucifixions with crosses shown as being made of three woods are usually from the Crusader states.

An exhibition at the National Gallery of 19th century Swiss and Norwegian landscapes from the collection of Asbjørn Lunde. I must admit I found the pictures a bit uninspiring! I have not been to either country so did not relate to them from familiarity. The picture descriptions were good and explained the political significance of the work however again it seemed to pass over me. Maybe it’s just because I’m a city girl and don’t ‘get’ rugged landscape!

Small exhibition at the National Gallery looking at the gallery’s first director and how he built the collection. The exhibition looked in particular at how Eastlake bought a number of pictures including the Bellini “Madonna of the Meadow” and included those pictures. It included his and his wife’s travel diaries describing meeting with sellers and how they found out about the pictures. This was a good way of showing off what the National Gallery archive holds and how it has been used for research. Reviews Evening Standard

Study morning at the National Gallery to compliment their exhibition “ Devotion by Design ” . It consisted of 3 excellent talks on themes from the exhibition. The first was the best by a co-curator of the exhibtion, Jennifer Sliwka, looking at the huge Sassetta altarpiece. She made you look at the work in a new way giving a lot of background on where it had been placed and introducing interesting ideas of how the side panels may work in a complex set of pairings. It made you go and look at the picture again with a fresh eye. David Ekserdjian from University of Leicester talked about narrative in altarpieces not just in the obvious pradellas but also in the embroidery on clothing or in the backgrounds. Finally there was a very different take from Ben Quash from Kings College, who looked at the different theological themes an altarpiece might reflect depending on its setting and use.

Jewel of an exhibition at the National Gallery exploring Italian altarpieces from before 1500. Although many of the pictures were familiar from the gallery’s own collection they were shown in a way which made you look at them again and see them in their original context. The first gallery looked at pictures which featured altarpieces to show how they were used in a liturgical setting. This was then backed up in the long room of the exhibition space by putting pieces with our labels on mock altars of the correct height for the picture. In particular this made the Signiorelli of the circumcision come to life and explained it’s off perspective and empty space at the bottom as is was display with a processional cross which filled the space. Reviews Times Independent Evening Standard

Lovely exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum looking at artefacts from the royal burial tombs and the palace of Aegae, the ancient capital of Macedon. It focused on the Temenid kings including Philip II and Alexander the Great and included new finds from recent excavations. I must admit in the first room I was feeling a bit despondent as it seemed to be full of rusty spears and just one gold crown however as you moved into the other rooms you realised this was just the early pieces. The second rooms was full of the most wonderful jewellery with the end display showing the complete jewellery from 5 women’s tombs displayed on Perspex bodies to show where the items would have been worn. This was stunning and really brought the pieces to life. The last room looked at life at court in particular the role of the banquet and included wonderful sets of eating vessels. This was a period and civilisation I knew nothing about but will now look out for following this eye opening exhibition. Reviews