'Drawn from the Antique' at the Soane Museum

Picture: Soane

Drawn from the Antique: Artists & the classical ideal Soane Museum, London to 26 September

Artists were spontaneously drawn to ancient sculpture, and there are very early examples of renaissance artists copying Roman statues. By the eighteenth and nineteenth century, copying casts of ancient sculpture was an essential step in academic artistic training, a part of a curriculum that ossified and sometimes became a little pedantic. The picture above can be taken as a wry comment on 'high' art. It's a self-portrait by William Daniels, adopting the persona of an image seller with a bust of Shakespeare, casts of ancient statues, and a brightly coloured parrot. 

The Soane's exhibition on the theme of artists' copying of ancient sculpture could have been a little arid, but quirky exhibits like this make it an absolute delight. There are some really top-notch exhibits, but even the best works are of a type rarely seen in London - a superb drawing by the northern mannerist Goltzius, and a sadly damaged picture by the scarce and fabulous Michael Sweerts. Most of the exhibits aren't famous at all. Some are anonymous, and others are by quite minor masters. But all are interesting. 'Greatest hits' shows can be overwhelming, and are rarely revealing. It's the chance to see something different that marks out the best exhibitions.

The exhibition is sophisticated as well as quirky, apparent above all in the outstanding catalogue, which is one of the best produced for a show in London. The introductory essay by Adriano Aymonino lays out the history of painters' engagement with ancient sculpture with a rare combination of erudition and brevity. It's almost a stand-alone monograph, strong on critical history and art history. It mercifully avoids the pitfalls of excessive theory, to which the theme lends itself: artists' relationships with classical sculpture passing from spontaneous to institutionalisation to reflexive critique. Pah! Glad to read some solid art history instead, and this essay makes me eager for Aymonino's forthcoming book on the collecting and patronage of the first Duke and Duchess of Northumberland. 

Something that bothered me in the exhibition was the preponderance of loans from Katrin Bellinger, a prominent dealer in old master drawings. Bellinger is a highly respected connoisseur-dealer whose shows I've always enjoyed, but there is still the perennial potential for conflict of interest in taking loans from dealers, when they are seeking validation for attributions and exposure for their stock. My concerns were assuaged by the catalogue's explanation that the exhibition is in part intended as a show of her private collection, which focuses on depictions of artists at work. In a sense the theme of the exhibition is one of the themes of Bellinger's well-chosen collection, so the combination worked.

London attracts plenty of blockbuster exhibitions, but recently most have been disappointing; obvious selections of 'greatest hits', flimsy catalogues, dumbed-down presentation. The best shows have been at the smaller museums, particularly the Courtauld and the Soane. The Soane in particular has taken risks with some rather offbeat exhibitions. Not all have appealed to me, but they have all been consistent with the ethos of this most idiosyncratic museum. An instructive contrast is the Jacquemart-André in Paris, which tries to shoe-horn miniature blockbusters into its small spaces, often disappointing and often invariably overwhelming the intimate space. This tiny show is much the most rewarding I've seen recently. And even if you can't make it in person, do try to read the catalogue. 

New Raphael!

Picture: MS

Very excited to see this new Raphael drawing Ajax and Cassandra at the British Museum recently, just accepted by the government in lieu of tax. The drawing shows Ajax abducting Cassandra from the Temple of Athena, where she grasps at the statue of Athena.

If you're called a Cassandra today it's usually because someone thinks you're making a false prophecy of doom, which is ironic because Cassandra's prophecies were true, but doomed to be disbelieved. In this drawing she is being abducted by Ajax (Ajax the lesser - not the famous one!) after the Athenians have taken Troy. No one had believed Cassandra's warning about the big wooden horse. Ajax swore that he didn't rape her, though no one believes him. Anyway, abducting Cassandra from Athena's temple was itself a heinous crime and he was later drowned after Athena hit his ship with a thunderbolt and Poseidon then sank it with his trident. 

It was probably made soon after his arrival in Rome in 1508, and he's responding to a classical source, perhaps an ancient cameo.* Raphael shows his skill in drawing the male nude, and shows the tense moment when Cassandra, looking to the statue of Athena for protection, is torn away by Ajax. There's a great contrast between the figures of Athena and Ajax, each with outstretched arms. Cassandra is just being peeled away from her tight embrace of Athena, a space opening up between her head and Athena's bosom. But still she is turned away from Ajax, with a huge literal and symbolic space between them.

It's a metalpoint drawing, which is made by using a metal stylus (often, though not always, silver) to mark paper that's prepared with a ground layer. The groundlayer gives the pinkish tinge to the eponymous 'Pink Sketchbook', although it was probably never bound as a sketchbook. Metalpoint was rather archaic by the early sixteenth century, but Raphael - that most versatile draughtsman - continued to use it to great effect. The new sheet is rather worn and battered, with large repaired losses at the margins. The British Museum owns two better preserved sheets from the same sketchbook. Facial Studies of the Virgin and Child in particular still shows the fine texture of the ground layer, and demonstrates a remarkably varied use of metalpoint, which is a medium noted for its limited expressive range.

The drawing has been on loan to the BM for many years, although it's not in their catalogue. It's now been accepted in lieu of tax, and is on loan to the BM pending formal allocation (which should be a formality). The acceptance in lieu scheme is economically irrational but politically savvy. There is no economic difference between taking £750k in tax and giving it to the BM to buy a Raphael or forgiving £750k in tax in return for a Raphael for the BM. But one of those options is politically more acceptable; acceptance in lieu looks like a free gift, even if it's no such thing. The net effect is to save some transaction costs, but it distorts museum acquisitions towards the random selection of objects offered up by people with big tax bills rather than the kinds of objects museums would choose for themselves. Still, I'm glad we've got this Raphael.  

Other objects accepted in lieu of tax can be seen here.

* Ruth Rubinstein 'Ajax and Cassandra: An Antique Cameo and a Drawing by Raphael' Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes Vol 50 (1987) pp. 204-205

Barocci

Picture: Artcult.com

To paraphrase Marx (Groucho), the critics all say that this is a brilliant show, but don't let that fool you - it really is a brilliant show.  It's a serious, well-curated retrospective that's also a great visual feast.  By concentrating on a relatively small number of major paintings it gives room to show the development of ideas through preparatory drawings, pastels and oil sketches.  It's tightly defined and nicely integrated; in the large central gallery you can look up from the preparatory sketches in a central display case to see the finished works on the wall.  Best of all, few have even heard of Barocci, so it's not too crowded and the people who are there want to see the art rather than to have seen the must-see show.   

Picture: Slam.org

The studies in pastel and oil are the stars of the show.  He produced brilliant head studies for the figures in his altarpieces.  I find it hard to believe that this effort was just an integral step in creating the altarpiece; the look like ends in themselves, labours of love and  great works of art in their own right.  I'm persuaded by the catalogue's assertion that some of these were produced for sale to private collectors.  Raphael loved to experiment with heads in different dramatic positions.  Barocci took the results of that experimentation and produced studies of immense beauty, dramatically lit and stunningly coloured. 

 

The life studies and compositional sketches do give a slightly one-sided picture of Barocci's art, emphasising its rootedness in nature and his individual creative energy.  The other side is the way he borrowed from other artists.  Dramatic gestures and bravura foreshortening draw directly from other High Renaissance innovators; it's no surprise to learn that Barocci owned a collection of Raphael drawings.  He seemed to be putting together elements of earlier art, taking individual figures and gestures and fitting them into new compositions.  I struggle to accept the grand claims that the catalogue makes on behalf of these compositions.  The combination of elements sometimes seemed less than the sum of parts, and the parts themselves are of variable quality.

 

The critics have understandably sought to rehabilitate Barocci and emphasise his greatness, but I do fear that reading some of the reviews out of context could give a false impression of his relative excellence.  For all the attention he paid to faces, hands and feet, his grasp of anatomy seems sometimes sketchy.  The most  silly example is the cat in the Annunciation (worn away in the painting, but visible in the etching); the leg is in entirely the wrong place.  The early sketch for the composition of the Visitation is oddly hesitant in depicting bodies.  Where Raphael captured human forms with graceful ovals, Barocci drew scrappy outlines.  Although hands and feet are beautifully rendered, knees and elbows are more summarily treated.  And sometimes his drapery doesn't so much reveal underlying forms as hide them away.

 

For all the effort that went into individual hands and feet, they don't work together to integrate a composition in the way that Raphael and Poussin mastered so well.  The Entombment is the best, I thought.  Some of the others seem an undisciplined agglomeration.  The Idle Woman astutely notes that the primary figures are often idealised to a point of saccharine sentimentality that's offputting; often the secondary figures are more compelling.

 

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned in reviews is the often execrable condition of the larger paintings.  Parts are very abraded, there are obvious areas of repaint, no trace of impasto (although this may largely be attributable to Barocci's technique), and odd patterns of craquelure that suggests in some cases that the canvases may have been rolled up or damaged by heat.  In some cases the condition may mislead us in assessing quality.  In the Last Supper, for example, there seems to be a fairly broad area of repaint in the horizontal arm of the servant in the foreground, giving a false impression of the contour.  The catalogue reproduces a drawn study that shows far more clearly defined muscles, which in the finished painting have perhaps been blunted by cleaning.  I would have appreciated more technical information in the catalogue; discussion of condition is very limited. 

 

I wish I could have seen the St Louis leg of the exhibition.  St Louis has a fine permanent collection including a Holbein, a late Titian, an important Michelangelesque sculpture by Montorsoli and some great Beckmanns.  I'm very impressed that this unfamiliar Midwestern museum collaborated on such a serious and impressive exhibition.  The catalogue isn't always reliable on which paintings were shown in each location (the Met's St Francis is in London, catalogue says St Louis only), but I'd love to have seen the small version of Il Perdino, and even more so the small version of the Entombment, in an anonymous private collection and looking ravishing in the catalogue.  It's a shame that provenance is provided only for the main catalogue entries, and not for any of the studies or replicas.
 

I always get a season ticket to the exhibitions I want to see, so that I can go little and often. I was in Madrid for the opening weekend, so my first chance to visit was late night opening on Friday. I was so impressed that I went back on Saturday and again on Sunday. Unfortunately the finger prints smeared across the glass protecting the drawings hadn't been cleaned at any point over the three days; it just got worse. Given the astonishing resources devoted to a conservation department that's endlessly scrubbing away at the surfaces of paintings, it's very disappointing that they can't keep the glass clean. Can't they give the conservators microfibre cloths and get them to spend twenty minutes in the exhibition before it opens each day? They'll do less harm polishing glass.
 

My gripes are just an attempt to bend the stick away from the slightly one-sided criticism that I've read elsewhere.  This is a fantastic and joyful exhibition.  The only ones from the last decade at the NG that are comparable are The Sacred Made Real and the Rubens exhibition in 2005, which I reviewed at Culture Wars.  I rarely encourage people to go to exhibitions; spending time in permanent collections is often more rewarding.  But really, you should go to Barocci. 

Overheard in the print room

Picture: BM

The British Museum must be the most open print room in the world.  Anyone with ID can just turn up and request anything, except for just a single restricted item (the Jacopo Bellini album).  I've recently spent three days there looking at Raphael drawings, but this was the first time that I saw more 'casual' visitors.  I was really impressed by the helpfulness of the staff, but I couldn't help be amused by some of what I overheard.  One visitor seemed to have wandered in by accident, and didn't have any idea what she wanted to see.  She was offered some 'greatest hits' ... maybe you'd like to see some Michelangelo?  She demurred!  Without batting an eyelid, the assistant offered some Pre-Raphaelites.  That turned out to be just the ticket.   

 

Although I'm grateful for unimpeded access, I confess to a frisson of fear when I see piles of Leonardo and Michelangelo freely handed out to any neophyte. 

A problematic drawing

Picture: Ashmolean

The most sensitive connoisseurs not only hold different views on this drawing; they espouse those views with utter certainty, and incredulity that disagreement is possible.  It's a drawing of Charity related to the fresco to the right of Pope Urban I in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican (see image below), and it's either by Raphael, or a copy by a good artist from his immediate circle.  I saw it at the Ashmolean in Oxford on Saturday. 

 

The mount labels it "? Raphael", and the Ashmolean website lists it as copy after Raphael, but it is in a box with authentic Raphaels.  The 1956 (reprinted 1972) catalogue by the excellent Karl Parker states that "there can be no doubt at all that it is a copy" (no. 665, p. 352).  Parker was a perceptive scholar and is an excellent guide to Raphael, but he was abstemious in attribution.  In the catalogue of the 1983 Raphael drawings exhibition at the British Museum, J.A. Gere and Nicholas Turner conclude that it is a copy by Penni.

 

On the other hand, Paul Joannides states that the attribution "is controversial, but needlessly so, for its inventiveness, both of arrangement and drawing style, is quite beyond any of Raphael's pupils" (The Drawings of Raphael, University of California Press 1983 p. 124 - cat. 453 and plate 46).  Joannides is probably the most eminent scholar of Raphael drawings, and I have found him an indispensable guide.  But I think he's wrong on this one. 

 

The woman's face is picked out with shading that closely imitates Raphael's style, but lacks his subtlety.  The drapery over the legs is not well related to the rest of the drawing, which becomes particularly apparent when you view it upside down, to get a sense of the tonal relationships.  Gere and Turner are right to criticise inconsistency of touch, with excessively dark shadows.  The elbows in particular lack Raphael's ability to capture light and shade.  Even in the reproduction above you can see the dark lump marking the elbow of the suckling child on the left.

Joannides is impressed with the foreshortening.  I'm not.  The arm of the child on the right seems almost foreshortened in reverse.  The forearm is excessive large and prominent, although it recedes from the picture plane.  It's noteworthy that this is a divergence from the completed fresco (below), where it continues straight rather than twisting down.  The contrapposto of this figure is also more awkward in the drawing.
 

Condition was not discussed by the sources I cite above.  There is some wear, particularly in the standing child.  It is at least plausible that this is a Raphael re-worked by an assistant.  Indeed, the very quality of finish speaks against Raphael's authorship; it reads more as a highly polished work of art in its own right rather than a working study, and Raphael's drawings seem always to be working studies.  However, there is insufficient variety of style and handling to conclude that two artists of markedly different ability worked on this sheet, and I don't think there is sufficient evidence to attribute even tentatively to Raphael.   

 

It's easier to make the case against this being by Raphael than to make the positive case for another attribution.  The attribution to Giulio Romano has generally been dismissed, partly because the drawing is so close to Raphael, and Giulio was a more distinctive personality.  He continued to be a very prolific draughtsman after Raphael's death, but abandoned chalk medium - maybe because he couldn't meet Raphael's standard. To my eyes, the handling of the face in particular is close to Giulio.  It seems to me plausible to speculate that this was an example of Giulio following Raphael unusually closely, but that must remain mere speculation; there is no strong visual evidence for his authorship.  The attribution to Penni is perhaps more likely, but this drawing seems to me to good to be Penni's.  Parker's 'After Raphael' seems right.

A day at the Louvre





Picture: MS



I just made it to Paris before the end of the Late Raphael exhibition, which I'll review more fully when I've had chance to digest it.  I got fully ten hours at the museum doing it as a daytrip on Eurostar - hurrah for late night openings!  The afternoon was spent in the print room looking at some more Raphael drawings.  The picture above is the view from my desk - it's a massive, magnificent room.  It was no problem getting an appointment, but I struggled a bit with the meaning of the 'red items' that could be seen only once.  Turns out it means that you can only request them once, ever - they keep a record of which drawings you've looked at, and on subsequent visits you can't request any 'red' items that you've seen before. 

 

I saw the best of the late Raphael drawings that weren't on display in the exhibition, including the Study for an Apostle for the Transfiguration (detail below), which was included in the exhibition in Madrid, but not Paris.  Seeing it in natural light in the print room gave a better appreciation of the immensely subtle shading than would have been possible in the artificial light of the exhibition.  I'd read the catalogue of Late Raphael before going and cross-checked the drawings I wanted to see, but to no avail - the catalogue reflected the Prado version of the show, and didn't include large swathes of the Paris exhibition, including a number of drawings that I fruitlessly requested in the study room.

Picture: MS

I didn't have time for much except Raphael, but I briefly saw the exhibitions of Giulio Romano drawings (excellent) and Luca Penni (so-so), both scheduled to complement Late Raphael.  On the way to Penni, I stopped off to see Poussin.  One thing I love about Poussin is that he's so unpopular - even when the rest of the museum is heaving, Poussin rooms always seem to be havens of tranquillity.  I needed that as a break from the scrum at Late Raphael. 

 

The damage done by the inexplicable, inexcusable, stupid Louvre Lens project was in evidence everywhere.  Jonathan Jones had a good article on it here.  The hang in the Large French Paintings room (below) is unbalanced by the removal of Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (how can this be permitted to leave the Louvre?  It is the Louvre!). 

 

Incredibly, Raphael's Baldassare Castiglione was taken out of the Late Raphael exhibition to go to Lens.  Many museums have surrendered their most important works for this landmark exhibition, but the Louvre cut short its own loans because the absurd Lens project had to have everything immediately.
 

 

 

There were lots of conspicuous gaps, well-documented at The Art Tribune, which gives us the apposite term The Gruyere Museum.  I dread the next development - the Louvre Abu Dhabi.







Raphael Drawings at the British Museum

Photo: BM

I've been inspired by the Raphael drawing exhibitions in Haarlem and Frankfurt (and seeing the outstanding drawing sold at Sotheby's), so I took a couple of days off work to look at the British Museum's amazing collection of Raphael drawings.  It was my first really sustained and focused study of drawings, and I'd prepared by reading as much of the vast literature on Raphael as draftsman that I could find.  But reading and looking at reproductions is truly no substitute for the real thing, and it was striking how quickly I learnt to discern differences in quality and to appreciate Raphael's artistic development.  I deliberately selected drawings by Raphael's students as well as attested originals so that I could make comparisons.  As I'd already seen in the Frankfurt exhibition, the students' work looks relatively better in reproduction.

The drawing above is from the Pink Sketchbook, in silverpoint on prepared paper.  No reproduction captures the astonishing subtlety of the original. 

Now I'm on a mission to see as much of Raphael's graphic work as I can.  Tomorrow I head to the Ashmolean, and I've got an appointment at the Louvre in January. 

Raphael Drawings in Frankfurt

Photo: Staedel

 

I liked the Raphael drawings exhibition at the Teylers Museum in Haarlem.  I like the Raphael drawings exhibition in Frankfurt even more.  The Haarlem show gave us context, showing Raphael alongside his pupils, and explaining the process of attributing drawings to the master.  The Frankfurt show is a display of 'greatest hits' based on the Staedel's own excellent collection of Raphael drawings. 

 

The first section shows the young Raphael developing rapidly, particularly through his engagement with variations on that most traditional subject, the Virgin and Child.  A section focuses on later narratives, including a group of studies showing the evolution of Raphael's ideas for the Disputa, and another section gathers an outstanding selection of studies for the Chigi Chapel.  I was delighted to have the chance to see the magnificent Windsor Castle version of the Massacre of the Innocents, and the Boston Papal Procession, a late work in coloured chalk that has been questioned but which I agree is authentic. 

 

The wall text is just right - enough to provide context without being overwhelming, with small colour photos of related paintings.  Unfortunately there are videos showing in side rooms, creating a constant distracting drone that's unavoidable at so many exhibitions today.  But the drawings are just amazing.