In Detail: Up Close with the Courtauld Collection 1

Fascinating series of online videos from the Courtauld Gallery looking at the hidden detail in some of the most famous works in their collection.

Each episode reveals elements in the artwork that may not be immediately obvious to the viewer – smudges of paint, fingernail marks and hidden details that can only be viewed close-up or under a microscope.

Episode 1 : Still Life with Plaster Cupid by Cezanne

Coralie Malissard discusses the role an onion plays in the bottom left of this picture. Infrared analysis shows that Cezanne reworked this feature and Malissard sees is as a way of blurring the bridge between the ‘real’ space of the table with the fruit on it and the illusionary space of the picture of fruit  propped up behind.

Episode 2: TheDream by Michelangelo Buonarroti

Ketty Gottardo (Martin Halusa Curator of Drawings) focuses on a detail from this drawing of two hands holding a bag or pouch and what that may mean for the overall meaning of the picture.

Episode 3: On Lake Lucerne looking towards Fluelen by J. M. W. Turner

Rachel Sloan (Assistant Curator of Works on Paper) looks at the materiality of this work, zooming into the traces left behind on the finished work by smudging and scratching with his fingertips and nails. The picture is from later in his career when he is moving away from detailed works to capturing light and atmosphere.

Episode 4:Trinity with Saints by Botticelli

Scott Nethersole (Senior Lecturer in Italian Renaissance Art, 1400-1500) looks at the role  of a small study of Tobias and the Angel Raphael in the bottom left hand corner of this picture, part of an altarpiece commissioned for a convent for repentant prostitutes, Sant’ Elisabetta delle Convertite in Florence. He discusses the fact that the figures were originally even smaller and in a different position and argues that they were probably painted by Phillipo Lippi who was in Botticelli’s studio at the time.

Episode 5 :Virgin and child by Parmigianino

Dr Guido Rebecchini discusses whether the picture is unfinished or whether it is an early example of an artist demonstrating ideas of making a work appear spontaneous as described by  Castiglione in “The Book of the Courtier”.

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