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 on their current exhibition on 14th century Siena. One of the curators, Laura Llewelyn, guided us through the show and the four artists it features. She explained how the aim of the show was to look at a crucial moment in Western art where painting came to the fore as the major art form. I had been to see the show a few days before and loved it so this was a useful chance to fill some of the gaps I’d missed when I was there and to understand more about the objects which had been chosen and how, in many cases, multi-piece altarpieces had been reunited. Llewelyn was particularly helpful in setting the scene both in terms of history but also in explaining the non-painting pieces in the show used to show influences and give examples of the objects in the paintings and which would have been seen around them.

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their exhibition on the 15th century artist Pesellino. The show marks the conservation of two panels on the story of David by Pesellino and the talk brought together Laura Llewellyn, the curator of the show and Jill Dunkerton who had worked on the conservation. Llewellyn talked us through the other works in the show and outlined what we know about the artists short life describing their technique and content. She focused in particular on the galleries own Pistoia Santa Trinita altarpiece which had been cut up in the 19th century and entered the collection incrementally in pieces. Dunkerton then talked about how she conserved the two David panels and what she learnt from the process. She talked about the quality and amount of gold work on them, how she had managed to reveal it and the effect it would have had. Having just done a course on Lorenzo de Medici I was fascinated her theory that they were painted as part o...