Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating series of short online talks from the British Museum looking at life at the fort of Vindolanda. The event was linked to the current exhibition “Legion” and brought together an interesting collection of speakers to talk about the fort. Guy de la Bedoyere kicked things off by looking at the function of forts and the types of people that would be found there. Barbara Burley, director of the Vindolands Trust outlined the layers of archaeology on the site and spent some time talking about the writing tablets which have been found and what they can tell us about everyday life. Finally novelist Adrian Goldsworth looked at how he has taken the facts from these, such as a birthday invitation, and used them to build stories of the fort and its place in the Roman world.

Excellent three-week course from the National Gallery looking at the Greek and Roman myths and how they inspired the artists of the Renaissance. Led by Richard Stemp the sessions were wonderful story-telling sessions illustrated by wonderful pictures. The first session focused on the gods and goddesses which a good romp through them based on Raphael’s “The Council of the Gods” 1518 for the Villa Fernesina.   It was a clever idea to take one picture as a guide which he kept returning to. Week two looked at heroes and humans, often the children of illicit relationships between a god and a human. We worked through Hercules and his labours as well as Perseus and Odysseus and their journeys. We spent some time looking at Luca Giordano’s “Perseus Turning Phineas and his Followers to Stone” from the 1680s and how it fits into the story of Perseus. Finally in week three we pulled the previous two sessions together to look at why the stories appealed in the Renaissance and they often...

Excellent exhibition at the British Museum looking at the life and times of the Roman emperor Nero. This show was visually stunning but also told the story clearly and carefully explaining the myths and reality of his reign. There were some wonderful objects mainly set out well to allow social distancing although I’m afraid showing coins doesn’t really work at the moment. There was a bit of queuing to start with but people spread out after the first section. You were greeted by this statue of the young Nero and this was followed by a lovely line up of his ancestors and a good explanation of how he came to power. I am sure I was not the only person of my age relating the statues to the actors in “I, Claudius”. There was a good section on his conquests including Britain with a moving slave chain found in a bog in Wales. I particularly liked a section on his love of theatre with some lovely frescos of actors and theatres which sat with displays on gladiatorial fights including some...

Fun series of blog posts on the British Museum website imagining contemporary travel guides of ancient cities.   Each follows the pattern of a modern travel guide with sections on how to get there, how to get around, what the sites are, what to eat and where to go shopping. They are illustrated with pictures and objects from the collection. This is such a witty idea but the articles are also packed full of information. I hope there are more to come!   I think my favourite was the Edo one as all the pictures are contemporary Japanese prints including this wonderful one of a busy shopping street. There is also an article on London landmarks using prints and drawings from the collection for those of us dreaming of a day out in London. Edo (Tokyo),early 19th century T hebes, Egypt, 13th century BC Athens, 5thcentury BC Rome, 1st centuryAD Ninevah, 7th century BC London Landmarks

Excellent fiveweek online course on Rome from University of Reading and FutureLearn using a 3D virtual reconstruction of the Roman city to tell its story.   I loved the format of this course with interesting videos, articles and walk throughs of the 3D model to look at the history of the city, political and religious architecture, everyday life and death and the role of entertainment. The videos were particularly good as they made for a welcome tour of the city in these times of lockdown. I didn’t get on very well with the self-guided tours of the model as I wasn’t very good at controlling it smoothly and got a bit seasick but the filmed ones were excellent.   The course was led by Matthew Nicholls who has also built the virtual city. He had an easy approachable style yet the content felt rich as it incorporated use of coins and literature as forms of evidence. I thought I knew the city quite well but I am now desperate to go back to see more such as the tomb of the baker...

Interesting exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology in Naples looking at sundials found at Pompeii. These were not particularly beautiful objects but they had been examined scientifically and a fascinating video showed you how a sundial could tell the time throughout the year. It showed how daylight was divided into 12 but each of those divisions of 12 was a different length depending on the time of year. It had been discovered that some must have been ornamental and brought from other places as they would not calibrated to work in Pompeii. There was one made specifically made for Pompeii. I also loved one from the bath house which had been used to regulate sessions at the complex. It was nice touch to display the Farnese Atlas, a Roman copy of a Greek work showing Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders, at the centre of the room. It shows a high level of astronomical knowledge and records discoveries made in the same period that it was made. 

Fascinating exhibition at the Archaeological Museum in Naples looking at how the news and information about the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii were recorded and circulated from their discovery to the invention of photography. Having been to Pompeii two days before we did this exhibition in filled in the gaps between the then of what we saw and the now of us experiencing it. I’d also done a course last year on classicism and this illuminated a lot of the points made on it about the re-emergence of classical style in art and architecture when these cities were discovered. I loved seeing the notebooks of the engineers who discovered Herculaneum when preparing a site to build a royal villa. They included Jakob Weber’s survey of the Villa of the Papyri. Some of his notes are the only record we have of sites as in digging them they were destroyed. They also had an early notebook showing the finds shown alongside the finds themselves and Francois de Paule’s first overall ...

Newly opened archaeological site of a Roman temple in the basement of the new Bloomberg Building. This Roman temple of Mithras has recently been relocated to the site on which it was originally discovered and is now in an attractive display in the basement of a new office block. It is free to go in but they recommend booking in advance. On the ground floor there is a wall of unlabelled objects found on the site with iPads provided to give details of the items. It is very moving to look at personal objects that were discarded in the past and to imagine the lives of the people who lost them. As you descend to the basement the street levels at different points in time are carved into the marble walls with details of historic events of the time. They limit the number of people going into the Mithraeum but there is a good video in the holding area to keep you occupied. You go into the main site in small groups and once in there you visit starts with a light and sound exper...

Fabulous ten week course at the Victoria and Albert Museum on classicism looking both at its roots in the ancient world and how later generations used and developed it. I have been meaning to do a V&A course for ages but, as they are quite long, I don’t get a chance as usually one holiday or another breaks into them. However this Autumn I was grounded after Italy in the summer so I took the opportunity to do this and it was great! While in Rome I’d become fascinated by the ancients remains there and what different artists would have seen at various periods of art history so this was just the course I was looking for. We had some excellent speakers. I’d heard David Bellingham before at the National Gallery and he is a very engaging speaker. I was impressed by the range of dates he could talk about doing talks on Roman emperors and how they showed their power, how Renaissance artists used classical sculpture, a detailed look at Botticelli’s Venus and Mars and then reappe...

Fascinating little exhibition at the British Museum looking at how and why images of the Roman emperors were defaced focusing on the coinage. The show pointed out that when images are made as a sign of power they are also liable to be defaced when the person represented is no longer in power. The earliest examples were of Nero and Caligula and included a coin from Caligula’s reign which had been over stamped with the head of Claudius. There were some busts included in the exhibition and these showed how they were often defaced by attaching the sensory organs, eyes, nose and mouth. It also looked at the habit of reworking a head to be a different empower. I was fascinated by a head of Germanicus with a cross carved on its forehead. Was this a mark of exorcism or baptism? Closes on 7 May 2017

Interesting small display at the British Museum focusing on a bronze head of Augustus which was found in Sudan. The head is in remarkable condition because it was removed from the statue during a raid on Italy by the Kush people who rivalled Egypt for regional dominance. It was then buried in the entrance to a small building so that everyone who entered the building walked over the head of the emperor. There was a fascinating slide show in the room showing modern versions of destroying statues as a political comment and also of a mosaic of George Bush snr outside a hotel in the Middle East so everyone entering the hotel stepped on him. Amazing to think we still do the same things now we have always done. Is this a remembered behaviour or just an instinct? The head itself was beautiful. It looked so fresh and new. I was fascinated to read that you can identify where it may have been made by the fact that a curl in front of the left ear curls back not forward. I wonder ...

Remarkably emotional exhibition at the British Museum looking at everyday life in Pompeii and Herculaneum when the volcano struck. The exhibition was beautifully laid out taking you through a Roman home from the street through to the kitchens using exhibits from the towns to show how people lived. It was like going round a Roman Ideal Home Exhibition!   You came away with ideas for things you could do in your own house. I loved the section which took you through the different decorative styles and was struck by the personal nature of many of the objects which were versions of things we use now. Whatever age you live in the human emotions and drivers are the same! I loved items which gave a direct link to a household such as the fish sauce producer who had proudly had a mosaic made of his product with his name on for his atrium. Also the fact that the remains of the dog from the start came from the same house as the “beware of the dog” type mosaic from a doorway. W...

Lecture at the National Galley given by Jan Stubbe Ostergaard from the NY Carlesbergy Glyploteh gallery in Copenhagen. This was part of a series of lectures to compliment the “ Sacred made real ” exhibition. This one looked at the evidence for use of colour in Greek and Roman statues and was fascinating. It was really interesting to see the surface of sculptures magnified 40 times and showing signs of the original colour. It talked about how ingrained in later Western art is the ideal of the white classical sculpture and how wrong that image is.