Cathy's Art Diary

Fun lunchtime talk at the National Gallery on Renoir’s “Dancing Girl with Castanets”. This talk pitched two regular speakers at the gallery against each other to talk for (Jo Rhymer) and against (Richard Stemp) the picture. It was a playful argument and in amongst the different discussion you learnt a lot about the picture, why is was painted, where is say in Renoir’s career and it’s possible symbolism. It also addressed whether taste should be part of looking at a picture art historically. In the end I was firmly in Richard’s camp. I’ve always thought this picture, and its pair, where hideous. Although they make more sense now I know they were painted as decorative panels I do worry what colour the walls were to match the awful background colour. Note to Farrow and Ball, don’t try to reproduce that one!

Short talk at the National Gallery on “The Origin of the Milky Way” by Jacopo Tintoretto in Room 9 given by Leslie Primo. Nice interlude after work looking at this picture and its iconography. Also covered a bit on the life of Tintoretto. I particularly liked the story of how he entered a competition to decorate the ceiling in the Council Chamber in Venice and won it by sneaking in one evening and just putting his entry up in situ then donating it to the council. This picture was painted for the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II and shows the moment where the baby Hercules is placed on the sleeping Juno’s breast to feed and give him immortality. However she wakes and the spilt milk forms the Milky Way. The speaker was excellent and drew quite a crowd by the end of the session and signed off with “That was the High Renaissance and this is Tintoretto. Thank you and goodnight!”