Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating lecture to introduce the new exhibition on Jan Gossart at the National Gallery given by Maryan Ainsworth, Curator of Painting at the Metropolitan Museum. The lecture went through the main themes of the exhibition and outlined new research which had been done for it. There was an interesting section on Gossart’s trip to Rome with Philip of Burgundy on an embassy to Julius II and how he later pulled on images he’s seen there and sketches he’d done. I was particularly interested in the section on new research which shows that Gossart worked closely with Gerard David, whose work I love. The lecturer called this a ‘prestige collaboration’ ie 2 artists coming together to work as equals.

One of a series of lectures at the National Gallery in the Paul Mellon Lecture series for 2011. Given by Elizabeth Prettlejohn, this was a fascinating dense look at the how Victorian artists’ discovered Spanish art and the effect it had on their work. She looked at when significant works entered British collections and who would have seen them. She also outlined contemporary art historic writing on Spain. Unfortunately I only managed to get to one lecture in the series so did not pick up on and follow the theme.

Nice little exhibition at Christchurch College Gallery in Oxford focusing on the life of Henry Aldrich, Dean of the college on the late 17th century. The exhibition focused on Henry Aldrich as a collector, looking especially at his collection of prints. It also looked at how he used the prints for his own designs. I liked the section on a design he did for a stained glass window which showed the original print it was based on, Aldrich’s design and a drawing of the window which has now been destroyed by a student. The exhibition included my all time favourite print Durer’s “St Jerome in his study” a real virtuoso work in which you can see more every time you look at it.