Cathy's Art Diary

Wonderful exhibition at the British Museum examining devotional objects from medieval Europe in particular reliquaries. It was like falling into a jewel box! I liked the fact it put the objects in context but also acknowledged them as beautiful and sometimes ground breaking objects. Having done a course at the Courtauld earlier this year on early Christian images it was wonderful to see the early items and see how iconography developed. In amongst the gold there were some wonderfully touching items such as St Cuthbert’s personal travelling altar, a really direct connection to the saint. However my favourite items have to be the reliquary for the Holy Thorn with tiny gold figures rising from their graves on the bottom and small gold apostles up the edge. Reviews Times Guardian Daily Telegraph Evening Standard

Exhibition at the Louvre of early Renaissance drawings and incunabula from the collection of Baron Edmond de Rothschild. I found this an confusing exhibition but this wasn’t helped by the fact we came in from the wrong end and did it backwards! The idea was to show how printing developed in Italy and how this was influenced by drawing. However the exhibition was dominated by a fantastic model book bringing together wonderful architectural fantasies and pictures by the Master of the Soane Album. The printing elements began with the wonderful “Battle of the Naked Men” by the Pollaiolo brothers and continued with a room of small early etchings. There were also some lovely drawings such as a boy in turban by Gozzoli and Gaddi’s drawings for his frescos at St Croce but they didn’t seem to fit with the theme.

Interesting exhibition at the Pompidou Centre which looking at how new media like photography and film influenced the work of Edvard Munch. The early rooms looked at how Munch set about reproducing his work. It looked at a series of themes which he revisited many times in his left. The first two rooms seemed almost identical but were the same hang of dfferent versions of about 6 works. There were then rooms on film and a wonderful picture called “Workers on their way home” which took a cinematic approach to a group of workers walking towards you. The whole exhibition was dotted with photographs and film taken by Munch to show how he used the new forms. I have to be critical of the way the exhibition was hung and used. The rooms were quite small and there were large groups of school children being lectured to in there. At times a group would practically fill a room and made it very difficult for other people to view the works. I knew very little about this artist and came away better i...

Small exhibition of illuminated manuscripts for the museums own collection at the Louvre in Paris. It was arranged over 2 rooms which almost displayed different worlds. The first room was the early work and showed a detailed medieval world with wonderful insights such as a woman chasing a fox which had stolen a chicken. It included wonderful works by Jean Fouquet. The second room was the Renaissance world with larger pictures looking at classical motifs and perspective. Some pictures were full page illustrations. There was a nice section on Flemish works as well.

Beautiful exhibition looking at the work of Fra Angelico and his contemporaries at the Musee Jacquemart Andre in Paris. The exhibition included about 30 panels by Fra Angelica alongside painters who influenced his work, such as his teacher Lorenzo Monaco, Masolino and Paolo Uccello, as well as artists that he inspired, such as Filippo Lippi and Zanobi Strozzi. It really was a vision of the use of light and was a real chocolate box for the eyes. I hadn’t realised Fra Angelico and also been an illuminator so was fascinated to see his works on paper. I fell heavily for an altarpiece by Baldovinetti with the most beautiful St Julian. An added extra was that you could buy the tape tour as a phone app which means I can still refer to it, look at the pictures and zoom into particular sections of pictures to study them further.

Talk by Dillian Gordon to coincide with the publication of a new National Gallery catalogue of ‘The Italian paintings Before 1400' at the National Gallery ( http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk ). This was a fascinating talk which looked at new information which had emerged since the last catalogue was published in 1988. It looked at both scientific discoveries as well as new discoveries of different elements of altarpieces. There was almost too much information to take in including new ideas on Duccios Maesta and Margarito of Arezzo picture in the gallery. One new thing I learnt was that crucifixions with crosses shown as being made of three woods are usually from the Crusader states.

An exhibition at the National Gallery of 19th century Swiss and Norwegian landscapes from the collection of Asbjørn Lunde. I must admit I found the pictures a bit uninspiring! I have not been to either country so did not relate to them from familiarity. The picture descriptions were good and explained the political significance of the work however again it seemed to pass over me. Maybe it’s just because I’m a city girl and don’t ‘get’ rugged landscape!