Cathy's Art Diary

Charming online lecture from ARTscapades looking at the life of Isabella D’Este, the Renaissance patron of the arts. Sarah Dunant, introduced her new novel on Isabella, based on her extensive research in the archives in Mantua which holdover 30,000 of her letters. She took us thorough Isabella’s life with readings from her book. Given her audience, Dunant, concentrated on Isabella’s art collecting and building projects including her studiolo. She explained how she liked a bargain and would look further afield that Rome to buy ancient artefacts. Since listening to the talk I have read the book and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d been looking for a good biography of Isabella for a while and this format felt accurate and a novel format made it more approachable to read. I loved the way she gave Isabella a voice, both from using the real text of her letters and making her a ghostly voice in the archive. This gave Dunant the chance to also look at changing approaches to history and to Isa...

Stunning exhibition at Tate Britain looking at the life, work and collecting of Kenneth Clark. I may just be saying stunning as it included so many things that I love that it was like walking round my own head! Renaissance, Bloomsbury Group, early 20th art, the National Gallery on the Second World War and throughout the whole a real sense of friendship and a desire to support artists. The show was beautifully arranged. I loved the way it set up the artists in a New Romantics gallery who were going to come to the fore during the war before the wonderful room of the war art. It gave you a real sense of why Clark picked particular artists for different types of picture. I will admit to shedding a tear in that room! The mix of fantastic art, the tableaux at the far end almost reproducing one of the first photographs you’d seen in the show, realising the music represented the Myra Hess concerts in the National Gallery and one mention of Raviolious was enough to send me over the...