Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting symposium organised by the Sam Fogg Gallery and held at the Royal Institution on the artistic links between the Islamic world and Europe. The symposium compliments an exhibition currently in their gallery and brought together some excellent speakers on the topic. Federica Gigante, from the Khalili Research Centre at the University of Oxford talked about how slaves from the wars with the Ottoman Empire, who were used to row pirate galleys by the Italians, were allowed to manufacture and sell goods in the 'off' season in the Renaissance period. Operating in Western Italy their presence partly explains the more ordinary Ottoman goods in Italy which would not have come via trade routes. I know a lot about this period but had never come across and found it rather mind blowing! Susana Calvo Capilla , a professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, discussed the political implications of the term Mudejar style in 19th century Spain and now.   I have to admit t...

Fascinating online tour from London Art Week of an exhibition at Sam Fogg looking at Medieval women as the subject and makers of art. Jana Gajdosova, Medieval specialist at Sam Fogg and Alexandra Gajewski   of Burlington Magazine took us round the show with four brief videos of the installation then picked out specific images to highlight themes. I loved the image of St Avia shown here which would probably have been set in a wall and fascinated to hear about Shrine Madonna’s which open up down the chest to reveal an image, often a Trinity, and fell out of fashion due to the theological contradiction that them implied the Virgin came before all aspects of the Trinity not just the son. They kept mentioning a previous round table discussion which I found on the Sam Fogg website which involved the two speakers from the talk plus Jeffrey Hamburger from Harvard University and Madeline Caviness from Tuft University. This talked more about the themes involved including the idea of who...