Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent online lecture from the National Gallery on the Rokeby Venus by Velazquez. Fiona Alderton talked about where the picture sat in Velazquez’s career and about likely inspiration for it from the Spanish royal collection including the Titian’s Poesie and works by Rubens. She then looked at it’s composition and in particular discussed the role of the mirror in the picture. Is it a commentary on aging? Is the woman actually looking at us via the mirror? She then talked about wo might have commissioned the work as it was actually to paint or own nude pictures at the time in Spain. She talked about how it was owned later by Manuel de Godoy who also owned Goya’s naked and clothed Maya before being bought by John Morritt of Rokeby Hall. She finished by talking about how the National Gallery bought the picture via a fund raising campaign and the incident in 1914 when it damaged by the suffragette, Mary Richardson, and the public reaction to that.    

Super course at the National Gallery looking at  Velazquez’s Rokeby Venus led by Karly Allen one of the National Gallery lecturers. The structure of the course was excellent setting the painting in its historic context looking at what Velazquez was doing at this time and where has was in his career as well as who owned the painting over the years. We then went to sit round the picture itself and look at its finish and get an idea of our own emotional responses to it. After a quick coffee we put this picture in its art historic context looking at other reclining female nudes plus the genre of Venus at her toilet. I particularly enjoyed this section as I am fascinated by how artists are influenced by earlier generations. It was also strange to think of Rubens and Velazquez going round the Spanish royal collection together looking at the Titians. There was then a session on responses to the picture since it entered the public domain n 1906 including the attack by a suffrage...