Cathy's Art Diary

Intriguing online lecture from the London Art History Society focusing on a specific chapel in Avignon Cathedral. Geoff Nuttall led us through this chapel and specifically the fresco outside it from around 1430. He told us about the family to whom it was dedicated and specifically about the father, Carlo Spiafame who had come to the city in 1385 from Lucca as part of a banking family, to service the papal court which was based there at the time. He talked about how the court brought Italian artists to the city but he thought the fresco was by a French artist who was influenced by them, possibly Jacques Iverny. He also speculated that they may have seen the Belles Heures de Duc du Berry as the Baptism scene is very similar and the Spiafame family had been involved in valuing his possessions on his death. He discussed the strange iconography of including donors in a scene of the Baptism of Christ and said this was the only example of that that he knew. He also pointed out that don...

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.