Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their Zurbaran exhibition. I’d been to the show the day before and loved it so it was still fresh in my mind when Francesca Whitlum-Cooper and Daniel Ralston, led us though it explaining the theme of each room and introducing the main works in the show. They talked us through the artist’s early career from which no work survives then described the works he painted on his return to Seville in the 1620s including this mysterious picture of “The Apparition of St Peter and St Peter Nolasco”. They went on to the rooms of works for the religious orders including a massive altarpiece for a church just outside Cadiz, paintings of single saints including the gallery’s own wonderful St Francis, a look at subjects which he repeated, work for the royal court and to be exported to the America’s, still-lives by him and his son and finally works for private devotion from his later years. This was a good comprehensive introducti...

Stunning exhibition at the National Gallery focusing on the 17th century Spanish artist Zurbaran. I love Zurbaran and had been looking forward to this show and it didn’t disappoint. The monumental   work looked amazing in the space and was given room to breathe. It was shown in a simple way which evoked the religious settings in which it would have originated. I loved the stark Crucifixion scenes set against black and the single figure saints reminiscent of Spanish polychrome wood sculptures. It was moving to see three panels of a massive altarpiece reunited. There was a beautiful room of still-lives by Zubaran alongside those of his son. It was a visceral moment when you realised his son had died in a plague aged just 29. The most surprising piece in the show was a huge painting of a head. Measuring about 6ft sq from a distance it was striking but I assumed it was an enlargement of a face from a painting but no it is, as described in the show, a colossal head, recently as...

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery on the 17th century Portuguese artist, Josefa de Obidos. Carmen Rippolles from the University of Oregan who has recently published a book on Josefa introduced her, taking us through her life and art. She placed her as an artist of the Counter-Reformation influenced by Spain but creating a Baroque style for Portugal. I had never come Josefa before so it was fascinating to learn bout a new artist and see work that was unfamiliar to me. She worked across genres and medium but did create large altarpieces as well as small devotional works on copper and still-lives.

Interesting exhibition at the Royal Academy focusing on the 17th century artist, Michaelina Wautier. The modern galleries at Academy had been decorated in dark colours to give an atmosphere contemporary to the art. It began by explaining how Wautier worked with her brother so sometimes their work is indistinguishable from each other and over the years some of her work has been attributed to him. The first room looked at the pairs' portraits with some lovely examples from each of them. It then moved on to religious and mythical work in rich Baroque colours before focusing on her major work "The Triumph of Bacchus" and other allegorical pieces. It was lovely to see another female artist being brought into the spotlight as I had done a lecture on the roots of feminist art history in the week however this show also got me thinking about how many artists generally have been forgotten or marginalised in favour of the well-known Old Masters as I had not only not heard of Mi...

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery looking at the life and work of the 17th century artist Anthony Van Dyck. Jo Walton led us through the topic over two session taking us in detail through a selection of images from his early days in Antwerp, through working in various cities in Italy to working for the English court. We looked in detail at his work for Charles I, its symbolism and how Charles used the work to build an image of himself. We also looked at his work for other members of the court as well as he self-portraits. Finally we discussed how later artists have looked back to his work and his influence since his death.

Interesting online lecture from the Wallace Collections discussing how Caravaggio’s “Victorious Cupid” came to be in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Neil McGregor, former director of the National Gallery and now chair of the advisory board of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, was interviewed by Xavier Bray, director of the Wallace Collection to mark the Wallace Collections showing the painting, on loan from the Berlin gallery. They began by talking about the picture itself with Bray sharing that the gallery was not allowed a poster of the painting for the show unless they put the label over the boys genitals. They talked about the Giustiniani brothers who commissioned the work and about other works by Caravaggio which they owned. They then discussed hat happened to the collection when it was sold in Paris in 1812 and how it was shown there for a number of years almost as a public show and how it influenced French artists of the time. We then went into a rather complex discussion of ...

Brilliant and subtle exhibition at the Wallace Collection presenting Caravaggio's "Victorious Cupid”. The painting, from 1602 is on loan from the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, is placed within the context for which is was painted. The introductory room introduces you to Rome at the time and the artist and patron. If you then turn right you enter a subtle recreation of the patron, Vincenzo Guistiniani's gallery of classical sculpture.   At the centre is an Aphrodite from Guistiniani's collection with an invocation of the view from the window of his palace at the far ending showing the church for which Caravaggio had painted his St Matthew paintings. Around the edge are reproductions of engravings of classical subjects. The blurb fails to mention that these were all in the collection and the engravings all come from a catalogue of the collection which I learnt from the lecture I'd done on the painting a few days before. The painting itself is shown in the room to th...

Excellent online lecture from ARTscapades introducing the exhibition of Caravaggio’s “Cupid” from Berlin and putting the work into context. Richard Stemp elaborated on this two room exhibition which I went to a couple of days after the talk so look for a blog of the show next. His first talk looked at the first room recreating Vincenzo Giustiniani’s sculpture collection. He used this to explain where Caravaggio was in his career at this point and his relationship with various patrons including the Guistiniani brothers. He explained how the engravings reproduced around the walls were from the catalogue of the collection by the curator of the collection, Joachim van Sandrart in the 1630s. In the second half he moved into the other room which holds the Cupid himself and two sculptures. He put forward some interesting ideas of other works of art which influenced the Cupid and went into some detail about the meaning of the work and precedents for it.   He also discussed how, althou...

Fun online lecture from the Wallace Collection examining Caravaggio’s life in Rome. The talk complimented the museum’s exhibition of Caravaggio’s cupid painting and set it in context. Andrew Graham-Dixon, art historian and author of an excellent biography of the artist, led us through Caravaggio’s years in Rome from his arrival to his rapid departure after murdering someone. He told the story in a lively and colloquial style making the period feel very alive.  

Slightly random online lecture from the Foundling Museum looking at music in Dutch Golden Age paintings. This was one in a series of talks on music in art and as such was geared to a more general audience rather than an art historical one. Mariska Beekenkamp-Wladimiroff, Founder of Art Historical London took us though the meaning of various musical instruments and of music in pictures in general as well as introducing the idea of symbolism in Dutch art. She had excellent illustrations but I would have appreciated a bit more structure to the talk possibly building to a conclusion.

Fascinating small exhibition at Compton Verney focusing on an unusual 17th century painting of two women. The pictures shows a white woman and a woman of colour both wearing beauty patches in a colour contrasting with their skin. The work was shown with research material exploring the themes of the work. It discussed how it dates from the Commonwealth period and may be making a moral point about vanity. It also speculated that the artist may be Jerome Hesketh, who trained as a Catholic priest, as it was possibly painted for the Catholic Kenyon family. He toured Catholic houses performing secret masses and painting portraits as his cover. No end date given

Delightful lecture at the National Gallery in the Supporters' House on how music was depicted and what it meant in the Netherlands in the 17th century. This was the third lecture and all of them have been excellent but this was made more magical by the addition of the lute player Andrew Maginley who joined the course leader, Belle Smith, and brought insights into the history of music at the time pointing out things like the fact music started to be printed in Venice in around 1510 meaning it could be more easily disseminated. He also told us how this was a period of experimentation with instruments. Smith led us through a series of images from the period and it was magical to watch Maginley play the lute in front of this work by Jan Miense Molenar. We dissected this and other works from the collection to look at what instruments were being played and what they meant. It was a nice touch to add a still life from the period which included a violin, a flute and music. Smith poi...

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery discussing their German collection and how it has been displayed in the new rehang. Matthew Morgan interviewed the curator of German paintings, Christine Seidel. They were quick to point of that for most of the period covered by the gallery Germany did not exist as a single country but as a series of city states ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. They also noted that the gallery has the best collection of work from the area outside a German speaking region. They talked about how there is only one room dedicated to German art and that is in the Sainsbury wing covering 1500-1600 and includes Cranach and Altdorfer. Seidel looked in particular at the latter’s altarpiece “Christ Taking Leave of His Mother”. They discussed why the gallery’s work by Durer appear in the Venetian room of the Sainsbury Wing and talked about his trips to Venice and the effect they had on his art and that of the local artists. They moved into the main gal...

Charming small exhibition at the British Museum of portrait drawings by a group of late 17th century artists based in London who knew each other. The display marks the acquisition by the museum of drawings by Samuel Cooper and Richard Gibson and they are shown with other works by artists in their circle who include Sir Peter Lely, Charles Beale, son of Mary Beale, and Sir Godfrey Kneller. The images are of family members, friends and servants as well as fellow artists. Most touching was Cooper's drawing of his cousin's infant son who died at a few weeks old. I loved Gibson's delicate drawing of his son-in-law, Michael Rosse, a jeweller and Kneller's of the artist Hugh Howard who he trained with in Rome. Closes 25 January 20

Clear and useful lecture at the Wallace Collection tracing Flemish art form Memling to Rubens. Richard Williams from the Royal Collection Trust used three works from the Wallace Collection, Memling’s “Angle with a Sword”, Pieter Pourbus’s “Allegory of True Love” and Rubens’ “The Holy Family with St Elizabeth and John the Baptist” to anchor the lecture over three sessions. He started with discussing what the Flemish tradition was and then looked at how Memling worked within this but also took it further. He looked at how Italian patrons commissioned work from him. He moved into the 16th century and looked at how Gossaert was influenced by his trip to Rome in 1508 with Philip of Burgundy. We looked at how more Italian art was appearing in Brussels such as the Raphael cartoons which were in the city at the time with the tapestry weavers and how this influenced artists. That session ended by looking at the Pourbus painting and the Italian and Humanist influences in it. The talk en...

Lively discussion in the Supporters’ House at the National Gallery looking at the influence of the world around him in Caravaggio’s art. Elizabeth Currie, who has written a book on clothing in Caravaggio’s art, joined Helen Langdon, a biographer of the artist to talk about some of his genre works painted in Rome. They outlined how there were two sides to the city at this time with a papal and cardinal’s courts existing alongside a disturbing underworld following an explosion in the population of the urban poor. Taking a selection of works they examined them in this context with Currie bringing insight into what the clothes tell us about the characters. This led to a fascinating discussion about feathers! My fact of the day is that the same material appears in the dress of “The Penitent Magdalene” and the lining of the man’s cloak in the second version of “The Fortune Teller” and that it may be ecclesiastical fabric.

Interesting exhibition at the National Gallery showcasing work inspired by this year’s Take  One Picture schools’ project. This show is often fun as it brings out different aspects of a familiar picture spotted by the children. This year’s picture was “The Courtyard of a House in Delft” by Pieter de Hooch from 1658, a painting I am very fond of. Aspects the children picked out included details of the architecture, the child’s clothing, the contemporary ceramics of the time picking up on the Delft connection and, in one case, imaging an advert for the position of the maid. This year the show was in two parts, one in the education centre and one at the St James Market Pavilion, neither of which I had visited before. It would have been good to see better advertising of the show within in the gallery. Closed 31 August 2025

Useful online lecture from the National Gallery discussing the new still-life room created as a result of the recent rehang of the collection. Bart Cornelis, Curator of Dutch and Flemish Paintings 1600-1800 at the gallery and Sarah Herring, an associate curator there outlined the history of still-life painting and discussed the paintings they had chosen for the room to illustrate this. The room covers from the 17th to the 19th century. They then widened the talk out to point us at 20th century examples by Cezanne and Picasso in rooms 43 and 45. This was followed by a lively Q&A session ranging from the role of insects in these paintings, through the Roman frescos in Pompeii and a discussion of who bought this pictures.

Interesting online lecture from the Royal Collection introducing an exhibition on James VI of Scotland and I of England at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Kate Anderson, from the National Galleries of Scotland, talked us through the narrative of the show and highlighted some key exhibits with an emphasis on items lent by the Royal Collection. The show divides into the king’s time in Scotland and England and his influence in Europe and the world. She talked about his regency, as he came to the throne of Scotland aged just 13 months when his mother was forced to abdicate, and there were some touching exhibits from his childhood such as a letter from him aged about 6 to the Countess of Mar. I was most excited to see that the portraits of his children, Prince Henry, Charles I and Princess Elizabeth, later Queen of Bohemia, by Robert Peake have been reunited and that seems to be just one of many reasons to try to get to the show.

Comprehensive online lecture from the National Gallery looking at the life and work of Velazquez. Jo Walton led us clearly through the subject with excellent illustrations and an emphasis on works owned by the gallery itself. She started with his early street work which I love and talked about the symbolism in it as well as emphasising the delightful still-lives he included. We then talked about how he went to Madrid and became the court painter and we looked in detail at the work he did for them. Alongside this we looked at his mythical and historic works as well, of course, looking in more detail at the Rokeby Venus and Las Meninas.