Stories of art Module 2 : Renaissance painting 1500-1600

Fourth session in a six week course at the National Gallery on Renaissance painting which focused this week on religion.

The first lecture was given by the course tutor Sian Walters and looked at how art reflected religious changes focusing on three paintings in the collection. Using Botticelli’s “Mystic Nativity” she discussed Savonerola in Florence and used that to lead into the Reformations. Taking Raphael’s “Pope Julius II” she talked about the role of the papacy and finally she used El Greco’s “Adoration of the Name of Jesus” to talk about Spanish religious zeal following the council of Trent.

The second lecture was given by Jennifer Sliwka, a scholar at the Gallery who looked in details at Michelangelo’s “Entombment”. She looked at the history of the picture since it entered the gallery’s collection and discussed in detail what the picture was actually of. On the basis that the tomb is pictured at the back and the body bares no relationship to the tomb she thinks is actually a Lamentation. She also looked at who the figures were and at drawing studies for some of them. Finally we looked at the context of the picture and why it wasn’t finished. I was fascinated to know that it had been commissioned for the space that Caravaggio’s Santa Maria del Popolo now occupies.