Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery discussing the redisplay of the Sainsbury Wing following its recent refurbishment. Laura Llewellyn and Emma Capron did a wonderful double act taking us through the reasoning around the redesign and rehang. They started by looking at why the pre-1500 collection at the gallery is so strong but the problems of the old display including the traffic jams getting to the Arnolfini Wedding in the end room. They then looked at why they start the display with the Northern European work and the challenges in showing these largely small works and why the early Italian gold ground works are now in the far corner, opening the Italian chronology. Next we moved onto how they hung the ‘nave’ of the gallery to represent how the art would have been displayed in churches when it was new. Having visited several times I think this section is particularly successful. They looked at the two themed rooms they had created on nature and gold and discus...

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their new exhibition focused on Quinten Massys’s “The Ugly Duchess” of about 1513. Emma Capron explained how the picture is more commonly called “An Old Woman” and was popularised as the model for John Tenniel’s original illustrations for the Duchess in “Alice in Wonderland”. However she then encouraged us to try to look at in the Renaissance context explaining the works in the exhibition which had been chosen to illustrate this.   She explained how it was based on a drawing by Leonardo which is only known in copies. It fits in his genre of drawing grotesque both from life and from his imagination and she talked about the role of these grotesque which were often used to imply moral laxity. She also talked about theories of comedy of the time and how this image might have reflected writings by Erasmus. One common moral and comedic trope was the idea of a couple mismatched in age. I was most interest in the secti...

Complex online lecture from the Courtauld Research Forum looking at Euguerrand Quarton’s Coronation of the Virgin in Avignon. I didn’t know this altarpiece from 1453 with a rather strange Trinity which shows the Father and Son as the same young, bearded man reversed. Emma Capron from the National Gallery took us through the various possible explanations of its iconography looking at how it reflects the wishes of the donor Jean de Montagny who had a devotion to the Trinity. She also looked at how it might reflect the visionary beliefs of the Carthusian monks as well as those of the mystic Bridget of Sweden. It does seem to closely follow Bridget’s writings. It was originally placed in the funeral chapel of Pope Innocent VI, the founder of the monastery, and elements of it may refer to the foundation story as well as encouraging people to pray for the soul of the founder. I do enjoy this sort of detailed analysis of a single image particularly one that is new to me.