Look at the Revival: Gossaert’s Adoration of the Kings

Touching online talk from the National Gallery with a reading of a new poem inspired by Gosseart’s Adoration of the Kings.

The National Gallery currently has an immersive exhibition of this painting if only we could get to it. It sounds wonderful with booths in which you can look at very high resolution images of the work and animated sections of it as well as seeing the picture itself. They also commissioned a poem from an x-Young Poet Laureate for London, Teresa Lola.

This event consisted of Clara Davarpanagh talking about the painting which is one of my favourites. She talked us through some of the detail of the work and also about the evolution of Balthazar appearing as a black king in images. Although he was described as black in early Christian writing he does not appear as such in images until the late 14th century. There is some idea that this post-dates the Council of Florence in the 1440s where there was a delegation from Ethiopia.

This was followed by Teresa touchingly reading her poem “Look at the Revival” where she images what the Balthasar in this painting may have been thinking and feeling after his experiences. I loved the repetition in the work of phrases about ‘thinking deeply’ and ‘knowing deeply’. Clara and Teresa then discussed the inspiration for the poem and how it was written. A fascinating insight into how one art form can inform and inspire another.

 

 

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