Stories of art Module 3: Baroque and the Dutch golden age 1600-1700

The second session of this six week course at the National Gallery focusing on the art of the 17th century.

This week looked at Rubens, Van Dyck and the Flemish Baroque. The first lecture by the course leader, Lucrezia Walker, looked at the work of the two artists and how it developed over this period looking in some detail at their major works. It was fun to take a look at Rubens’ Marie de Medici cycle as they have always fascinated in the Louvre as they appear quite silly to the modern eye. 

The second session introduced us to Ulyana Gumeniuk a former BP Portrait Award winner and fellow of Trinity College. She has done much work copying, although she described it as transcribing, the Old Masters in galleries from which she investigates what were the artists first brush strokes and how did the picture build up. From that experience she then creates her own works. I found this session fascinating and I could see that she was working in a Baroque style but I must admit I’d have preferred more on Van Dyck and the art history.

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