Cathy's Art Diary

Comprehensive and fascinating four week online course from Paula Nuttall on the Sistine Chapel. As ever with Paula the talk was clear and well thought out with good illustrations. As usual she overran gloriously! Week one we looked at the early frescos after setting the scene and looking at the design of the chapel itself. I love the frescos but never thought about how the project was co-ordinated to give a consistency across the work of multiple artists. Paula’s theory was that Perugino was the master having already been working in Rome and as he painted the most prominent frescos and the altarpiece. Week 2 we looked up to the next stage of the decoration and Michelangelo’s ceiling. I had recently done a course on the young Michelangelo with Paula so this felt like an extension of that. We looked at how the artist painted this massive undertaking from its inception to its unveiling. I was particular interested in the section on his influences. Week 3 was Raphael’s tapestries a...

Fascinating exhibition at the Royal Academy focusing on the years in the early 16th century when these three great Renaissance artists were working in Florence. I have done various courses and lectures which have covered this period and I was grateful that I had as I would have liked a bit more scene setting in the narrative and display. A roundup of what the two established artists, Michelangelo and Leonardo, had done before this point would have been useful as well as some more sense of what the city was like and where it was politically. That said, to an art history geek like me, the show was a joy, focusing on a short period of time and covering some iconic projects. I liked the contrast between the mature artists and the young Raphael who was learning from looking at their works. The first room looked at Virgin and Child works and how they were influenced by the “Taddei Tondo” owned by the RA. I liked the depth of this examination. It led into the second room which looked i...

Stunning exhibition at the National Gallery on the life and work of Raphael. I had been so looking forward to this exhibition, which had originally been planned for 2020 to mark 500 years since the artists death, and it didn’t disappoint. You are greeted by the gallery’s own Mond Crucifixion which looked amazing and it just continued getting better and better ending on a high of a room of portraits. It was good to have the small leaflet with the pictures descriptions back as it does stop people bunching around the labels and eases the flow around the show. The show was given added grandeur by being in the more classic upstairs rooms and there with wonderful vistas to iconic pictures throughout. There were some great loans including one of the Vatican tapestries, the portrait of Bindo Altoviti from Washington and beautiful Madonnas from Naples and Madrid. Where significant pieces couldn’t be moved there were good facsimiles including one shown at eye level of the School of Athens...

Useful online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their current exhibition on Raphael. The curator, Matthais Wivel, explained how the show is anchored by the galleries own ten Raphael’s and talked about each of them in turn and where they sat in the artist’s career. He also looked at how these related to the loans to the show. He talked about Raphael as a collaborator and how he was influenced by other artists such as Leonardo and Michelangelo as well as how diverse and varied his career was ranging from painting, through architecture, archaeology, print making and design. I went to the exhibition a couple of days later at a members preview and spotted the speaker taking guests around. Again watch this space for a review of the show but the talk was a good preparation for it.

Excellent online three week course from Paula Nuttall on Raphael to compliment the National Gallery exhibition. Paula split the course into three useful sections the road to fame, which looked at his years in Urbino and Florence; the achievement of fame, looking at his arrival in Rome and early work for Pope Julius II; and finally the triumph of fame looking at the vast amount of work he did in the last five years of his life. We of course covered his paintings and fresco work but also looked at him a print maker, architect, stucco artists and designer of sculpture. She also looked at the influences on his work and how he studies and borrowed from other artists without copying. I was particularly interested to learn about works he quoted which would have been in Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo’s studios when he was in Florence but were not yet on public view. Paula had wonderful illustrations and led us though a huge amount of information in a clear and engaging fashion. I cam...

Interesting small exhibition at the British Museum which invited six emerging artists to reaction to a Raphael drawing to mark the 500th anniversary of the artists death. The show included the double sided Raphael drawing of five studies of nude male torso’s from about 1505, drawn when he was in Florence. It was a result of him seeing Michelangelo’s lost “Battle of Cascina”. I liked Chrystal Chia’s simplified ink and thread drawings which emphasised the line of the originals as well as Eva Suhajek’s bright abstract composition on shaped board which seems to mirror the shape of the figures on the drawing. My favourite, shown here, was Yulin Huang’s colourful version of the drawings layering ink, spray paint, gouche and oil paintings on panel. Closes 13 October 2021

Beautifully refurbished gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum for displaying and explaining the Raphael Sistine Chapel cartoons. I have always been fond of this room and the cartoons and the refurbishment makes them look even better. There is new brighter but subtle lighting and the walls are a lovely dark blue colour makes the cartoons pop off the walls. For the first time the light makes it more obvious that the works are on paper and up close you can see the texture and the old fold marks. They are shown with a few contemporary works by artists Raphael knew and worked with, as well as the huge earlier Legend of St George altarpiece from Valencia which is a good reminder of the development in art over the previous 100 years. All of this helps to give atmosphere without detracting from the cartoons themselves. While the refurbishment was being done the opportunity was taken to do lots of research work on the cartoons which is well presented online. It is a shame that, in th...

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery talking us through the design of Raphael’s Mond Crucifixion of 1502-3.  Carlo Carsato started by asking if we though the picture was boring as it appears uncomplicated and slightly minimal. He then took us through a series of other paintings which may be quoted in it and asked us again. Having made us look at the work and think he then took us through where it was made for and how it would have looked in situ. He examined how the proportions of the space would have influenced the composition then talked us through the various elements. Finally he looked at how the elements were put together and how they were designed to draw our eye around the work and how that would have aided the spiritual contemplation of it. It was a really thoughtful look at the picture, described simply and clearly.

Excellent three online talks from London Art Week over three days to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Raphael.   These were engaging and intelligent talks with high quality speakers from many of the planned celebrations and from ongoing projects and research work. They had left you feeling that you had been listening to three fascinating conversations and wanting to follow up lost of the leads and discussions.   Day one looked at how the celebration had been affected by Covid-19. Touchingly the main three speakers were asked to show a handful of slides which encapsulated what the event had meant to them. Matteo Lanfranconi, curator of the main exhibition in Rome, showed photos of the pictures draped in black when the country went into lockdown and a picture of the front of the Pantheon where Raphael is buried on the actual anniversary and it’s deserted square again due to lockdown. Day two focused on the tapestry cartoons in the Victoria and Albert Museum brin...

Excellent online lecture form the Victoria and Albert Museum on the Raphael cartoons and the refurbishment of the gallery. Ana Debenedetti, Curtator of Paintings and V&A and lead curator for the renovation, took us through the history of the cartoons and their creation. I hadn’t realised that three had been lost, one very soon after they were made but two others were rumoured to be owned by a Medici in the 16th century. What a find that would be! She also talked about the new gallery display and the av resources which will be available both there and online. In the gallery you will be able to look at high res images, a 3D scan and the infra-red images in layers. The walls have been painted a darker colour and there is new furniture and lighting. Such as shame that it was due to open the day of the lecture but Lockdown 2.0 hit. She also hinted that when they do open there will be some research results and new discoveries published for the press. I can’t wait to see and hear the...

Small exhibition at the National Gallery bringing together their work by these three High Renaissance artists. The show didn’t do much more than display works I already know well together with a bit of an introduction. They even had their original labels and no new commentary on them to make links. The show would have been better described as “we’ve still got the Royal Academy Tondo so what more can we do with it”! Still how can I complained about seeing such iconic works together! Closes on 28 January 2017  

Fantastic exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum looking at drawings by Raphael. The show was well themed taking you through different subject matter then into some Raphael’s later projects so there was a chronological feel as well. The commentaries were excellent and were good at pointing out the purpose of the picture whether it was a finished work, a study for a project or a working sketch. The show was beautifully displayed with nice central units with deep wooden frames set into them in places. These were particularly useful for double sided drawings. However the works themselves were so lovely you could have put them in any order or context and they would still have shone. I particularly liked the rougher drawings where he was obviously working through an idea and you could see changes and though patterns. I loved the section on his work in Rome as I have studied the Vatican frescos so often on courses plus fell in love with the Palazzo Farnese on a trip last year. ...

Showing for members at the National Gallery of a new Sky Arts film on Raphael. It was introduced by one of the gallery’s curators who pointed out that not a lot is known about the life of Raphael and it was noticeable that the programme was a bit light on some of the details. However the art was shown beautifully and it filmed in some interiors which can’t be visited. It evoked a good sense of what it might have been like to live in Florence and Rome in this period and placed the work in the context of other things which were happening at the time. It was interesting to watch the credits at the end as there was a good list of the works shown and where they can be seen.

Good exhibition   at the Louvre in Paris on the later work of Raphael. It started with five large pictures and accompanying drawings including some commissioned by Pope Leo X for Francis I. A real strength of this exhibition was the bringing together of paintings and their drawings. There was a heavy emphasis on works for the popes including the decoration of the papal apartments. there was a good definition of studio of that Raphael "controlled it's quality and homogeneity".  There was also an emphasis on his legacy and followers mainly Giulio Romano and Gian Francesco Penni with a gallery devoted to each of their works. Romano was more mannerist in style while Penni was quite delicate. The exhibition saved the best till last with a room of stunning portraits many of which were old friends. Particularly beautiful was a Romano picture of a young man thought to be a Medici.  However the whole thing confirmed my suspicion that Raphael copied and imita...