Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent online study morning from Paula and Geoff Nuttall looking at the history and art of Naples from the 13th to 15th century. Geoff started the morning by looking at the Angevin’s who ruled the city from 1266 to 1435 guiding us through the complicated order of succession covering both the early French Angevins and the later Durazzo branch of the family from Hungary and Croatia. He outlined their building work in the city and looked in particular at the patronage of the civil servants around King Ladislav. I was delighted that he spent quite a lot of time talking about the tomb shown here for Admiral Antonio Baboccio de Piperno which I had discovered a few years ago and loved but I didn’t know a lot about it. He talked us through the imagery in some detail. Paula then took over looking at the Aragonese rulers of the city from 1442 to about 1504 focusing on Alfonso I including his work to rebuild the Castel Nuovo, his commissioned of medals from Pisanello, his interest in Nor...

Fascinating two week online course from ARTscapades looking at the development of the Gothic style in France. Jana Gajdošov from Sam Fogg Limited and the Victoria and Albert Museum lead us clearly through four lectures, the first three grouping cathedrals chronologically and stylistically and the last focusing on Notre Dame often seen as the pinnacle of the style. It would have been useful to have a glossary of terms to refer to so I had to do a lot of Googling for spellings when I typed up the notes but as the course progressed you became more familiar with the terms. I liked the way the speaker took us through church by church building up a progression of ideas. I discovered a number of cathedrals I hadn’t heard of before and now have yet another travel itinerary to add to the bucket list.

Stunning exhibition at the National Gallery on St Francis and how he has been perceived and represented. The show was cleverly themed to also give a roughly chronically narrative as well. The central round room used the galleries panels by Sassetta from 1437-44 to tell the story of Francis’s life. It was lovely to see these hung at eye level so you could study the detail. My favourite room was to one side and had the earliest images in the show. I was stunned by an altarpiece from about 1250-60 which may be the earliest image of the saint alongside a work which is said to be painted on the back of the board his body was washed on after his death. The next room looked at Counter-Reformation images which used mystical images of Francis. It was wonderful to see Caravaggio’s picture of Francis with an angel over from America. I’m not sure I’d ever seen it in the flesh before. The next two rooms looked at how later generations have seen Francis as an environmentalist and radical. I...

Fascinating study day from the London Art History Society looking at the art of the papacy in Avignon from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. Alexandra Gajewski from the Burlington Magazine and a specialist on architecture of this period took us though the history of the city in this period looking at how that history influenced art and architecture. I don’t know the city at all and now want to visit. There were some wonderful slides of the papal palace, the remains of the bridge and various chapels from around the city. For a brief half an hour, I may have understood the papal schism, which I never did when studying Medieval history at university! I was fascinated to learn that Simone Martini worked and died in the city and fragments of the frescos he did for the cathedral survive in the museum. Also to see the drawing of Cardinal Jean de la Grange’s tomb which was destroyed in the French Revolution but was probably one the largest and greatest tombs of this period.

Fascinating online lecture from the Churches Conservation Trust looking at how love and marriage were reflected in medieval tomb monuments. Jessica Barker from the Courtauld Institute took as her starting point The Arundel Tomb in Chichester Cathedral which shows a couple holding hands. Although this is a 19th century reconstruction she felt this is how it would have originally have looked as there are many other examples of this around the country. She discussed a number of these and suggested that the hand holding was not a romantic gesture but a sign of a legal contact as often the women had bought land to what were controversial marriages. She also looked at tombs reflected ideas of marriage at the time giving two examples of brass memorials to merchants which give heavy emphasis to the children born to the marriage as a sign of a life well lived in the absence of rank and wealth. I liked the section which discussed two tombs commissioned by women, the wonderful Alice Chauce...

Interesting online lecture from the Churches Conservation Trust looking at the development of the Crucifix in English churches in the Middle Ages. John Munns of Magdalene College, Cambridge explained that until the Reformation every parish church in England had a Crucifixion scene usually on a beam or screen in front the chancel arch. There are no complete sets surviving but he discussed the few remaining fragments and compared these to other Crucifixion images to look at how they developed from 1050 to the end of the 13th century. He talked us through the move from showing a triumphant Christ often clothed as a king to a suffering Christ with legs bent and hanging from his arms in a crown of thorns. He explained how the crown of thorns image became more popular after King Louis IX brought it from Constantinople to France. He also looked at how imagery influenced devotion and visa versa. He introduced us to this beautiful fragment from All Saint’s South Cerney, found with a pair...

Stunning exhibition at the British Museum on the life and afterlife of Thomas Becket. I studied Becket both at A Level and at university so I was really looking forward to this show and it did not disappoint. From walking in to see an old friend, the early Limoges casket showing the murder from the Victoria and Albert Museum, I was gripped. The show told the story well using fantastic objects and led you through his life, the murder, the political aftermath, his sainthood and miracles, and how Canterbury became a major pilgrimage site. It is hard to pick out the best objects as so many were wonderful. I loved that they had early copies of some of the five eyewitness accounts of the murder which made you fell you were almost touching the event. I liked the manuscript on his time in exile which was almost like a comic strip. How wonderful to get a 13th century font from Sweden which shows how far and how quickly the news that Henry II had integrated the murder spread. I think my...

Glittering three week online course from Richard Stemp on the use of gold in paintings in the International Gothic and early Renaissance periods. In the first week we looked at the use of gold on early works in the National Gallery. Richard explained the different techniques   and showing us different examples of how it was used. He talked about the practical function of gold to reflect the candle light in the dark churches and led us though the iconography of a series of images. This all set us up to study two specific pictures over the next two weeks, The Wilton Diptych from 1395-99 and Carlo Crivelli’s Annunciation from nearly 100 years later in 1486. The former is a more traditional gold picture showing King Richard II with the patron saints of England kneeling before the Virgin and a troupe of angels. Richard talked us through the religious and political iconography of work. The later is mainly painted but uses gold to pick out the ray of light and the dove representing t...

Excellent study day organised by the London Art History Society as the last in a series on early Italian art focusing on lesser-known fresco cycles. Other study days in this summer series had looked at specific cities but this final session swept up other art which wasn’t in those three major centres. We also had a different lecturer for this session and Clare Ford-Wille took us on a lovely tour of Northern Italy and added lots of towns to add to my list of places I want to visit. Most interesting was her tour of the abbey at Pomposa which I had not come across before. Various abbots had commissioned cycles to promote the church. Sadly none of the artists are known but there seems to have been a fashion for depictions of the Last Supper at circular tables. We then looked at cycles in Padua which are overshadowed by the amazing work by Giotto which we had studied in the previous session. We started with the work of Giusto da Menabuoi in Baptistery commissioned by Fina B...

Fascinating study day organised by the London Art History Society and held at Friends House focusing on the role of Sienna in Early Italian Art. This was the fifth day in a series on this early period of Italian art and this time focused on the art of Florence and in particular at the role of Giotto.     John Renner, the lecturer, started by looking art in Florence before Giotto including going thought the art and architecture of the Baptistery in some detail and works by Cimabue. We then spent a delightful hour looking at Giotto’s masterpiece, the Arena Chapel in Padua, in detail. As ever John had wonderful, high quality images which were almost better than being there! I loved the section where he went through the sequence of images of Joachim and Anna which included the beautiful detail used for this article. In the afternoon we went on to look at the work of that Giotto did in Florence from Virgin and Child pictures to the Bardi and Peruzzi Chapels in Santa Cr...

Fascinating study day organised by the London Art History Society and held at Friends House focusing on the role of Sienna in Early Italian Art. This was the fourth   day in a series on this early period of Italian art and this time focused on the art of Sienna.   John Renner, the lecturer, started by look at the relationship the city had with the Virgin and the plethora of early images this produced. This followed the Battle of Montaperti with Florence in 1260 when, following the city offering the virgin the keys to the city in the cathedral, it was said that the Virgin laid a veil of mist over the battlefield the next morning leading to Sienna’s victory.  We then went on to look at Duccio’s Maesta painted between 1308-11 and commissioned by the city. He talked us through the iconography in detail and how it can be read in different directions. In the afternoon we moved on the Duccio’s successors Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers who I must admi...

Fascinating study day organised by the London Art History Society and held at Friends House focusing on the role of Assisi in Early Italian Art. This was a third day in a series on this early period of Italian art and this time focused on the art of Assisi. I’d been a number of years ago and it was lovely to have this reminder of what I’d seen and it made me want to go back soon.   We went through the art chronologically with an obvious focus on images of St Francis. In the morning we looked at the art in the lower church from around Francis’s tomb from the earliest period soon after his death. This work was mainly by Maestro di San Fancesco and Cimabue. The lecturer John Renner took us through the works and talked about how these works defined the iconography of the saint. We then moved onto the Upper Church and a Giotto fest, or is it? John talked about how the earliest Frescos were by other artists from Rome such as the Isaac Master shown here. He also looked at whe...

Excellent study day organised by the London Art History Society and held at Friends House focusing on the role of Pisa in Early Italian Art. This was the second study day in the series and the first to focus on a particular city. In the morning we started by looking at the early painting from Pisa focusing on the Byzantine style of Giunta Pisano. We looked at the various styles of Crucifix and how they changed from the open eyed living Christ to the contorted dead figure and how this followed the theology of the time. We then moved on to the sculpture of Nicola Pisano and talked about how he studies Roman sarcophagi and worked out the techniques involved in them to produce wonderful pulpits. The lecturer has excellent pictures of the pulpits at Pisa and Sienna. In the afternoon we moved on to Giovanni Pisano and looked at how he developed this style having worked with his father on the Sienna pulpit and how he developed the idea of figurative tombs and how this was taken u...

First of a series of study days on Early Italian Art in the 13th and 14th centuries organised by the London Art History Society and held at Friends House. This first day was lead by John Renner and gave an introduction to and overview of the period. It’s a subject I know quite well but it’s good to hear it put into context. The first talk looked at how this art was discovered after it fell out of favour following Vasari’s great work which upheld Michelangelo and Raphael as the pinnacle of art and how early Italian art was rediscovered and championed in the 19th century. We then went on to look at the drivers for artistic creation in this period from the strong economic background, the inception and growth of the new religious orders, the Franciscans and Dominicans, and the role of art in showing civic and family importance. This was followed after lunch by a look at the techniques and forms of the art. The lecturer had good slides from the National Gallery which looked at ...

Thoughtful display at the National Gallery showing Duccio’s Annunciation with the modern sculptor Caro’s Duccio Variation no 3. Caro created this work when asked to respond to the picture by the gallery back in 1999 and this is the first time that this painting and sculpture have been seen together. In particular he responded to the architectural elements in the picture. The sculpture is made of wood so the same material that the picture is on. It acts a lot like a stage set and invites you to look at the space in the picture again and think of it as a 3 dimensional space. While in the gallery my friend and I looked up the other variations made by Caro on our phones to see how they differed. It might have been nice if pictures of this works could have been part of the display as they made up a longer conversation with the picture. As this was shown in the space usually used for the Della Francesca’s it was also interesting to see them in a new setting alongside other ...

Last session in a six week course at the National Gallery on the period covered by the Sainsbury Wing roughly 1260 to 1500. This week the course leader Richard Stemp looked at the books which influence the art of the time starting refreshingly with the Bible. He talked us through various pictures and how they reflect their Bible stories. He then did the same with some saints lived from the Gold Legend for example looking at why the dragon in Uccello’s St George is on a lead. We then turned to two secular works of fiction, Dante’s Divine Comedy and the Decameron and looked in particular at the story of Griselda from a Cassonne. Finally we looked at two art theory works Cennini’s Craftsman’s Handbook which take you through the craft of painting in detail and Alberti’s Della Picturra which looks at the aesthetics of painting and talks about how to compose a picture. This was a really good end to an excellent course. I’ve not done modules 1,2 and 3 so roll on the sum...

Fifth session in a six week course at the National Gallery on the period covered by the Sainsbury Wing roughly 1260 to 1500. This week the course leader Richard Stemp looked at the role of religion as this was the main reason to produce art in the period, as devotional works for public and private spaces. He talked us through the iconography of a number of the pictures including the earliest picture in the National Gallery collection by Margarito d'Arezzo and the Crivelli Annunciation. He also looked at how new ideas which took hold in this period such as the Immaculate Conception were shown in art. In the second half Pieta Schade, Head of a Framing Department, talked us through the aesthetic choices made by the gallery when framing a picture. He looked in particular at the reframing of the Virgin of the Rocks.    

Fourth session in a six week course at the National Gallery on the period covered by the Sainsbury Wing roughly 1260 to 1500. This week the course leader Richard Stemp looked how the works were taking us through the techniques used to make an early altarpiece such as the Pessellino altarpiece in the National Gallery. He talked about the commissioning process and what the artist would need to do sell his ideas to the patron. He then talked about how each layer of the picture was built up including the integrated frame. In one fascinating section he looked at all the different styles of gold work in the Wilton diptych. He also touched briefly on works on linen. In the second half Jill Dunkerton from the conservation department talked about how oil painting became more significant but also debunked the myths drawn up by Vasari about its invention by Van Eyck and its introduction to Italy by Antonello.  

Third session in a six week course at the National Gallery on the period covered by the Sainsbury Wing roughly 1260 to 1500. This week the course leader Richard Stemp looked at the importance, particularly for works from this period, to realise that they were not made to hang in the sort of gallery setting we see them in now. We had to think about the space they were made for and what else might have hung with them. He have the wonderful example of the gallery’s Duccio Annunciation in which the virgin seems to point oddly over her shoulder. It is only when you see the praedella it came from that you realise she is pointing at the prophet who foretold the event. The second half was Alan Crookham, Research Centre Manager of the National Gallery, who looked at the Sainsbury Wing itself, how it was commissioned and how the design was reached. He had wonderful items from the archive with him such as the notes made by the architects and gallery staff on a fact finding trip they ...

Second session in a six week course at the National Gallery on the period covered by the Sainsbury Wing roughly 1260 to 1500. This week the course leader Richard Stemp looked at the role of society on art in this period. He looked at who was commissioning art and how that was reflected in the works. He looked at the type of people who seem to have been attracted to the different styles. He also looked at a lot of the detail in the Crivelli Annunciation and how it was influences by events and patrons. In the second half Carline Campbell, Curator of Early Italian art at the gallery, discussed art which was made for domestic settings focusing on wedding chests. This was fascinating but I would have liked more on other domestic art forms but time was limited.