Cathy's Art Diary

Innovative exhibition at the National Gallery highlighting Gossaert’s “Adoration of the Magi”. I love this picture and it is one of those I have to see in the run up to Christmas. I therefore know it well already. This show presented the picture then, within small booths, you listen to a soundscape of the work and see some amazing high-definition images of it. You could zoom into sections of the picture but I’m not sure I mastered that technique. It didn’t seem to zoom into the sections I wanted to look at.   You were then encouraged to look at the picture again while a poem written from the point of view of the black king, Balthasar. I’m not too sure what I thought of the show though. The high-definition images were amazing and you could see detail which you don’t notice with the naked eye but it would have been nice to have had more time in quite a processed process with the picture itself. Again the soundscape made you realise there were things in the picture I’d not seen b...

Excellent morning at the National Gallery looking in detail at the lovely nativity scene by Gossaert “Adoration of the Kings”. The lecturer Aliki Braine, took the innovative approach to begin with of giving us a print of the picture and making us fold it up to help us look at the symmetry of the work. We then looked at the detail of it and the iconography. She then took us through the technique used taking Messys St Luke as an example of how an artist worked. She showed us a Van de Goes with a similar composition but cut down. We also looked at the Durer print which featured the dog in the foreground. We also talked about what is known about Gossaert the man. We spent some time at the picture sharing our thoughts and observations. Aliki also talked us through some of the other contemporary pictures in the room to show us the diverse nature of art at the time. I’d not realised that an Adam and Eve in the same room with a very sculptural look was also by Gossaert. The t...

Lecture at the National Gallery to accompany the current Gosseart exhibition . This lecture was given by Catherine Reynolds an independent scholar and put Gasseart into the context of Netherlandish art at the time. She claimed that would have had access to many earlier work including the Arnolfini Wedding as he worked as a picture restored for Margaret of Austria. Although he took on many new innovations from Italy he put these into the context of early Netherlandish work. She outlined how Gossaert adapted the style of earlier painters such as false frames in portraits.

Nice exhibition at the National Gallery looking at the career of the Netherlandish artist Jan Gossaert. The exhibition aims to put Gossaert into context and re-establish him as one of the great artists of his day. I am not sure it succeeds. It is a good overview of his career and I am sure he was very innovative but the ideas he brought in were followed very quickly by others so it is hard to get a true view of how ground breaking he was. There are many excellent works in the show but because he was influence by many people and things you don’t get a sense of one artistic vision. My favourite section was the portraits. The very focused views of men of the time with false frames behind them throwing them into your space were super and you can’t help but love the portrait of the small Danish princess. It was also super to see his Adoration of the Magi with preparatory drawings and pictures which influenced the picture such as an etching of dogs by Durer. Reviews Times Guardian Daily ...