Cathy's Art Diary

Intriguing online lecture from the National Gallery examining the presence or lack of presence of Black figures in two Titian paintings. The talk was given by Rosy Akalawu-Ellman, an artists and student who had started he BA a few days before. She had been on the gallery’s Articulations scheme to encourage public speaking skills to young people. She talked about Black History Month and some of the problems she thinks it raises in that it can concentrate on suffering and liberation and put Black people in a white context and she discussed some of the philosophers being this. For me the more interesting section of the talk looked at the Black figure to the far righthand side of Titian’s “Diana and Actaeon”. Is she a maid or an allegorical figure? Why is she the only clothes female in the work? She talked about the trend for Black models across Europe but particularly in cosmopolitan Venice. She then looked at “Perseus and Andromeda”, in the same series of paintings for Philip II, ...

Fascinating online lecture from the Courtauld Research Forum looking at Titian’s painting “Concert Champêtre” from about 1510. Chriscinda Henry, from McGill University in Montreal and author of “Playful Pictures: Art, Leisure and Entertainment in the Venetian Renaissance Home” discussed the figure playing the lute at the centre of the picture and how his role as a member of one of the Compagnie della Calza, social groups of patrician young men, may have influenced the work. Despite my interest in Venetian art I’d not come across these groups before and now realise how many paintings I have seen them in in their brightly coloured doublets and hose with legs of different colours. Henry talked about how music and theatre were often a part of their parties and gatherings which were also attended by the leading courtesans of the time. They often intellectualism rural life in their poetry which is reflected in the picture. She also discussed whether this picture might have been commis...

Unusual online talk from the National Gallery introducing the idea of slow looking. C aroline Dawson and Holly Morrison explained the idea of taking time to look at a picture. They said that on average we look at a picture in a gallery for 8 seconds, I suspect I take a bit longer than that! They discussed the role that audio description can play in this and, taking Titian’s “Bacchus and Ariadne” as an example, Caroline took us through various descriptions of sections of the work, encouraging us to close our eyes while we listened then to look at the area the picture she had described with a fresh eye. I did find that there were things you looked at again, for me the cloud formations, however I found the words distracting. It felt odd to use a different medium to make you slow down and look at the work. Just stop and look. The idea seemed to be to make you look more closely and make up your own mind about the image and yet you had just been told what to look at. I also realised t...

Fantastic three week online course from Paula Nuttall on the six pictures by Titian in his Poesie series. This was a new venture by Paula to run online courses and I thought it worked really well so bring on more! In the first week we looked at mythological painting before these works both by Titian and others. We concentrated on the works for brother and sister Isabella and Alfonso D’Este and for Isabella’s son, Federico Gonzaga in Mantua. Titian worked on the pictures for Alfonso but would certainly have also known the work going on at Palazzo Te in Mantua. The second weekly session was spent looking in detail at the pictures themselves, currently together for the first time in centuries at the National Gallery. We discussed how Titian used Ovid’s Metamorphoses as a source for the story but thought about when he picked the particular moment in each tale. Finally we looked at the commissioning process between Philip II of Spain and Titian and the free hand the artists was given ...

Remarkable exhibition at the National Gallery bringing together the six mythological pictures Titian painted for Philip II of Spain. I had been so looking forward to this show but I ended up doing a rushed look round on the way back from collecting a last few things from work prior to starting to work from home for the Coronavirus so I must admit my heart wasn’t in it. I know all the paintings well from books but it was lovely to see the National Gallery’s work back alongside the companion pieces from Madrid, Boston and the Wallace Collection and a nice touch to include Apsley House’s Danae which is now thought to be the original painted for Philip. The paintings were described well, outlining the story as well as when and where they were delivered to Philip. At the time I wasn’t sure about the colour the gallery was painted but seeing it again on videos I realised it picks out the red he uses and there is a little bit of that colour on every picture. The curator of the e...

Excellent workshop at the National Gallery looking in detail at Diana and Actaeon by Titian as part of a new series on pictures whose subject is myths and legends. We began by looking at the source of the story, Ovid, and how the poem was reflected in the picture. We also looked at the fact it was part of a commission from Philip II of Spain for a series of myth pictures or Poesies and how these were late paintings by Titian which gave him a lot of freedom in their composition. We spent a lot of time at the painting itself discussing the composition and listening to reading of the section from Ovid and discussing what was included and left out. Finally we returned to the seminar room to talk about the greater meaning of the story and larger themes in in such as the difference between about sight and the act of looking, a popular theme with artists. I came away with a much greater understanding of the work and felt I had looked at it in much more detail than befor...

Nice exhibition at Aspley House presenting recent research on the Titian’s there. All the pictures were of women. At one end of the room two from the house were hung with one from the Courtauld. One of the Apsley House pictures had been recently x-rayed and a version of the Courtauld picture of “Toilet of Venus” had been revealed of which two versions are known. There was also a nice feature on their Danae picture which had been to the Prado for conservation in 2013. Work done there showed it to be the picture that Philip II bought direct from the artist as opposed to the one bought by Velazquez for Philip IV which it had thought to have been. There was a nice comparison of three know versions, this one, the one in the Prado and one in Naples.

A lovely study morning at the National Gallery looking at the Aldobrandini Madonna by Titian lead by Caroline Brook. I thought I knew the National Gallery Titian’s well but I must admit to not consciously looking this one before. On first glance it looks like a standard Madonna and child plus John the Baptist with a saint but as you look closely you start to question whether the figure is a saint as she has no halo or attributes and also to wonder why the Madonna is sitting in the countryside. We started by looking at the context of the picture in 16th century Venice and where it sits in Titian’s career. Titian was prolific in the 1530s when this picture was probably painted but very little of the work survives. For example of 12 works done for the Hapsburgs only 2 survive. We spent a lot of time in the gallery looking first at a Bellini of a Madonna in a landscape and then comparing that to the Titian. The tutor made us look carefully at the work and then we compare ...

Nice exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery bringing together three of the Titian Metamorphosis pictures and showing them with other Venetian pictures from this time from their collection.   Pictures around it included a good Bassano “Adoration of the Kings” which included a very good bottom, a “Christ carried to the tomb” by Tintoretto, which had a surprising amount of colour in it for him and a portrait of an archer which might be a Giorgione. The commentary was also fascinating. I had realised that Venetians were good at colour because they had such great access to pigments through the trade routes but I had never realised they liked using canvas as it was the same material used for the sails of the ships! I had also never thought about the great use of landscape in Venetian art, when they don’t really have any! There was also a good room of prints and drawings the best being a woodcut by Titian, which is thought he drew on the block and then someone else ...

An imaginative exhibition at the National Gallery bringing together the three Titian mythological paintings and commissioning reactions from artists, choreographers and poets. In collaboration with the Royal Ballet, the exhibition takes the metamorphosis theme of the pictures a step further and creates works which are themselves a metamorphosis from the Titian. I watched the Imagine programme on BBC about the ballets and was fascinated. It helped me to understand how the works fitted together as it was hard in the exhibition to get across the idea of movement despite including the costumes and set designs. Of the contemporary works I loved the fluid slow movement of Conrad Shawcross's machine Diana but I am afraid the Chris Ofili pictures left me a bit cold although I did prefer Ofili's ballet's set and costumes. Mark Wallinger's installation was fantastic. I had read about it and felt I knew what to expect but had the strange experience of looking through t...

Scholarly exhibition at the National Gallery focusing on an early work by Titian currently on loan from the Hermitage. The picture put a religious scene into a wonderful landscape complete with detailed flowers and animals. Ii was displayed with drawing s which complemented it in front of it. The rest of the gallery included other Titian’s from the Hermitage and contemporary Venetian works from the National Gallery’s collections such as the Bellini “Madonna of the Meadow” and a Giorgione from the collection I didn’t know. In fact I felt the pastoral figure at the back of the Titian was very similar to the main figure in “The Tempest”. Review Evening Standard

Very small exhibition at the National Gallery to celebrate the conservation of a picture by Titian. The picture is round one representing the Triumph of Love shown as a cupid on the back of lion. It was a cover for a portrait so is shown alongside Titain’s “Allegory of Prudence”, the wonderful picture of three ages of man which may also have been a cover and the reverse of other works. It is a nice small study of a niche subject. It complimented my Courtauld Summer School as it had been owned by the Vendramin family who feature in the great Titian family portrait in the gallery. Reviews Evening Standard

Small exhibition at the National Gallery bringing together Titian’s “Death of Actaeon” and “Diana and Actaeon” to help raise money to but the later for the nation. Painted for Philip II of Spain it is lovely to see these two works together. They were presented with the sections of Ovid which they represent. Review Daily Telegraph