'Michelangelo & Sebastiano' at the National Gallery

Michelangelo & Sebastiano National Gallery London to 25 June

Sebastiano del Piombo’s great fortune was to be taken under Michelangelo’s wing. But that was his great misfortune too, for he has lingered in Michelangelo's shadow. This scholarly and delightful exhibition traces their relationship, showing the confluence of Michelangelo's genius for composition and Sebastiano's mastery of colour and quirky inventiveness, Michelangelo's supreme command of anatomy and Sebastiano's talents as portraitist.

In the early Judgment of Solomon you get a sense of Sebastiano's soaring ambition, a large complex composition that he couldn’t quite resolve and abandoned unfinished. His encounter with Michelangelo in Rome was fortuitous. Sebastiano got compositional ideas from Michelangelo, Michelangelo got his ideals taken forward in the intensely competitive marketplace that Raphael was starting to dominate. 

The mix of sublime masterpieces and sometimes faltering trials is compelling. Sometimes you get both together. The Viterbo Pieta (top) is an inventive and moving masterpiece, but who can believe in that masculine mother? A friend said you expect chest hairs to sprout from her robe. The walnut frame was specially made for the exhibition by the National Gallery's Head of Framing, Peter Schade. He also made the new and spectacular frame for the NG's 'first' picture, the great Raising of Lazarus, below in its new frame.

For me the sculptures were the high point and the low point. The plaster cast of Michelangelo's Pieta gives a better feeling for it than the original in Rome, hidden behind inches of glass. The two versions of The Risen Christ, one a cast, are intensely moving, and seen together with Michelangelo's drawings is an unforgettably powerful visual experience. The low point is seeing the Royal Academy's Taddei Tondo imprisoned in a box (below). It's an utterly unsympathetic and depressing display. Better if it weren't there at all.

The selection and display is surprising. Artists' letters are interesting for content rather than form, but this show includes original missives taking space that could have been given to drawings. Sebastiano's portraits have least connection to Michelangelo, but there are some fine examples included. It's wonderful to see them, and the Clement VII is a masterpiece, but they confuse the focus of the exhibition. Worst of all, the National Gallery has been hornswoggled into showing  a purported portrait of Michelangelo that might be an outright fake. It's a recent attribution shown as 'Probably by Sebastiano' (what's wrong with the word 'attributed'?). The condition is poor, and so is the anatomy. There's a better Sebastiano on loan from Longford Castle in the main galleries, in a little focus exhibition of works related to the exhibition. Discoveries seem new and exciting, but selection should be driven by quality rather than celebrity.

Both artists benefited from collaboration, which this exhibition shows brilliantly. But who can stand comparison to a genius like Michelangelo? Inevitably Sebastiano is diminished by juxtaposition. Sebastiano was a wonderful draughtsman, but he seems almost feeble set against some of Michelangelo’s greatest hits. A show that ought to have rehabilitated Sebastiano has pushed him further into the shadows. And that is my main reservation about this exhibition. Conceiving of the show as ‘Michelangelo & Sebastiano’ keys into our worst expectations of exhibitions: ‘unmissable’ blockbuster (‘Michelangelo – so famous he was even a Ninja Turtle!), or else as competition (who’s the best? As if that could be in doubt).

If you know anything about Sebastiano, it's that he was Michelangelo's ally against Raphael. I just wish the exhibition had been oriented more explicitly to the wider context. La Madonna del Velo is an obvious response to Raphael, as the catalogue notes, and the portraits seem indebted to Raphael too. It wasn't simply a time of Renaissance rivalry. Personal rivalries make compelling stories, but in the long run the creative mix of ideas was more important. And beneath that unbelievable triad of Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael were dozens of lesser artists who deserve more attention. Some are distinctive and well understood, like Sebastiano, but others are still hard to isolate like Gianfrancesco Penni. 

Commercial reality and cultural expectations conspire to push museums towards simple formulae. A lot of critics have failed to grasp the show, seemingly disappointed that Michelangelo is encumbered by the little guy. But museums of the National Gallery's stature ought to be able to take more risks. How wonderful it would be to see the little guys together, to see how the second tier drew on the breakthroughs of the High Renaissance and try to get closer to some of mysterious students and followers. In the meantime we just have to make the effort to appreciate Sebastiano in his own terms, as well as enjoying some of the absolute pinnacles of human culture in this show.

What happens without guards...

Picture: MS

It looks like some one has run their fingers across this frame at the National Gallery, breaking off a big chunk of gilding. I assume it happened quite recently, as the fragment is still there. There are quite a few other chips where the gesso is bright white, indicating that they could be recent. The picture, Departure of the Argonauts by the Master of 1487, is on loan from a private collector. It's in the same gallery as the celebrated Botticelli Mars and Venus and it's often packed, but the guards has to cover the room with the Leonardo as well, so it's usually unattended. Two renaissance cassoni are used as tripods for photos, and the gilding is noticeably worn in the middle. 

Cost cutting in museums imposes real costs, alas.

Privatisation at the National Gallery: a reflection, and a modest proposal

The National Gallery has outsourced its security; the guards' strike was an abject failure, as AHN explains. The Union had a weak hand, and played it badly. The National Gallery always held all the cards, but they mismanaged the situation spectacularly. They unfairly dismissed an employee, but not just any employee. They sacked a union rep during one of the most contentious negotiations, which was a fantastically stupid move that caused the situation to escalate. 

The NG brought the strike on itself. Outsourcing is still a bad idea, but its implementation was handled incompetently. There is a serious lack of basic managerial competence and basic savvy. It is not simply that a senior individual made the decision to sack the union rep, but also that the management structure allowed the decision to be taken—it's a collective failure. And then it was compounded by upholding the decision on appeal. Morons. And where was the expertise from the Trustees, who are meant to provide outside guidance? The board seems stuffed with dilettantes who relish the social cachet but don't bring much to the table. I'm always appalled when the board minutes record their delight with the progress of restoration, which few of them are even qualified to judge. 

I'm not ideologically opposed to privatisation. My objections to outsourcing one of the key functions of the gallery are practical. But I do understand the need to save money and operate more efficiently, so in the interests of constructive engagement let me suggest a better candidate for outsourcing: conservation. The NG's conservation department has, in its history, done incalculable damage. Most of the collection has been drastically over-cleaned, given the collection a different appearance from museums in Europe that have been more cautious. 

The conservation department is expensive, powerful and dangerous. It holds great institutional power at the NG (the Head of Conservation was interim director before Nicholas Penny). It should be subservient to the curators. And it is dangerous, because its institutional authority means that it is immodest and subject to groupthink, promoting its bad ideas elsewhere—like the appalling overcleaning of the Leonardo's Virgin & Child with St Anne in the Louvre, promoted by NG conservator Larry Keith.

An internal conservation department has a natural incentive to create work for itself; who is going to say that nothing currently needs to be done, so they should take a holiday? On the other hand, it may on occasion have too much work to do, such as preparing pictures for a big exhibition, which incentivises haste. Given the lumpiness of the work schedule, it is a natural candidate for outsourcing. The day-to-day work of inspecting pictures annually ought more properly to fall to the curatorial department, which ought to have the skills to inspect pictures physically for damage and identify conservation work required. Outside consultants can be brought in to assist as required. 

The internal cost of cleaning a small picture is £34,500, which is far above commercial rates. And the NG is less competent than many independent conservators. They are now having to crowdsource to raise the funds to keep the conservation department going. Enough! Close it down. Save the money, and hire contractors. If they don't have the money, restoration will have to wait - which is not necessarily a bad thing, given the disastrous consequences of their historic haste. 

Listening to the pictures: Sound in museums

Picture: Wikipedia

This picture has haunted me since I first saw it some years ago in Utrecht's Catherijneconvent. It's a tiny painting that hung in a darkened cloister, a sublime masterpiece that jumped out from the other fine medieval pictures in that lovely little museum. I'd known it from illustrations, but it hadn't prepared me for the really emotional experience of seeing the original. I went back recently specifically to see this one picture, after seeing the Wtewael show nearby. It was one of the most awful experiences I've ever had at a museum. The picture is now in the middle of a brightly lit gallery, with a loud musical soundtrack booming out from a speaker above it. Music from different periods plays on a short loop. It simply ruins the experience, and makes it impossible to appreciate the picture. Even with fingers in ears, the music is unavoidable. This deeply emotional and profoundly sorrowful picture is wrecked and trivialised when booming mood music is imposed on it. The subtlety of Geergen's vision is overwritten by the curators' crass muzak selection.

Music creates a particular mood. Advertisers and marketers deliberately use music to establish brand image and persuade you to spend money. It's their prerogative to impose a uniform experience on consumers. But pictures are naturally more open-ended. My experience of the Man of Sorrows is likely to be different from yours. But the imposition of a specific soundtrack closes down those experiences, enforcing uniformity. It's utterly inimical to the way I want to see art. Yet museums are introducing sound and video more and more into the staid galleries of old masters. The Met has an especially ridiculous audio visual display around the great Adam sculpture that they smashed a few years ago. It was apparently championed by their director, scholar-turned-impresario Thomas Campbell, and curator Luke Syson, notorious for his role on the committee overseeing the disastrous restoration of Leonardo's Virgin and Child with St Anne.

Now the National Gallery has an entire exhibition of 'sound art', in which 'sound artists' are invited to respond to pictures in the collection. It is feeble, as astute critics have recognised. The display of Antonello's St Jerome also includes a model of his study with a hilly landscape, which looks a lot like a craft project I did at school when I was six or seven years old. The musical choices are painfully obvious, and this ticketed exhibition deprives visitors of great pictures like Holbein's Ambassadors. 

The defensive publicity material tells us that the National Gallery is meant to be an inspiration to all kinds of artists, not just visual. Indeed. But that doesn't mean that the NG is obliged to show the fruits of that inspiration, no matter how badly they've withered. Nature, too, is an inspiration to poets and artists. But we can appreciate the lake district without have romantic poetry broadcast from the hilltops. And in the case of the NG's exhibition, it's more William McGonagall than William Wordsworth.

So why the desire to include sound in museums? The most hilarious comment I've seen is from Sandra Beate Reimann, who curated a sound show at the Tinguely Museum: "Our culture, since Plato, has focused on the primacy of the eye as a means of understanding the world. In the past year we've seen a trend to go wider and bring in other senses." Wow. Just wow. It tells us so much about the self-regard of contemporary art, and its utter lack of historic sense that anyone could try to divide the history of human culture into 'all history from Plato to 2014' and '2014 to 2015'. Of course anyone with an iota of historical awareness knows there's a rich history of exploring the world through different senses, and of reflecting critically upon it. We might reasonably wonder what Reimann can add to our culture given her profound ignorance of its history.

The curators at the Met and the National Gallery aren't ignorant of history. They are learned scholars expert in art history and skilled in sharing their knowledge with a lay public. Yet they seem defensive about their own expertise. Rather than tell us about great works of art, they defer to idiot popularisers who claim implausibly to have special insight into modern audiences and modern art (you know, the great advances of the past 365 days that Reimann enthuses over). The curators' knowledge is for nothing if they can't tell these people to shove off. These intrusive and stupid musical shows are not only without merit, they rob us of the chance to enjoy our own experience of truly great art.

Strikes at the National Gallery

Picture: BBC

The National Gallery's guards are striking against plans to outsource their jobs. People are understandably annoyed at disrupted visits, and my first instinct is to back the NG on this one. The guards' case has not been well made. The boorish fool trolling Bendor Grosvenor's blog does their side no favours, and Polly Toynbee's support almost guarantees that I'll take the other side (an unworthy prejudice, but I find it an effective heuristic). Hackneyed arguments against evil outsourcing are often a plea for special treatment rather than a principled case for a public service ethos. Sometimes outsourcing is just a cheaper and more efficient way of delivering a service, and I'm all for that. 

 

But this time I'm with the union. Their fight for the best terms for their members coincides with the public interest, and they're doing a better job of safeguarding the gallery than the trustees and managers. The NG is pursuing outsourcing for the wrong reasons and it won't work. 

 

First some background. Outsourcing requires an explicit contract defining the services to be delivered and how delivery will be monitored and assessed. Contractors need to bid on a level playing field, so they need precise definition. Contracts are then won primarily on price - the cheapest tender generally wins. So the contractors are acting predictably and rationally when they seek to provide the barest minimum service consistent with the service level agreement. That's not a problem when services can be defined precisely. If the job is patrolling a goods yard, outsourcing might make sense. You want people on the ground as a deterrent, with an easily defined and easily assessed role. The contractor needs to hire a rota of staff, give them a defined patrol route, then monitor with GPS and CCTV. Contractors' cost cutting benefits consumers and taxpayers, but only if they continue to provide an appropriate level of service - which has to be definable in a service level agreement.

 

The National Gallery's guards don't just patrol the galleries. Theirs is a more complex and more important job, which in my experience they do very well. They have to balance an enforcement function with a public service function. They must be courteous, professional and helpful, and also sometimes assertive in protecting pictures from visitors who may be quite inadvertently putting them at risk. How do you write that down in a contract? Guards are always in the public eye, and I've seen laziness and incompetence from time to time. But I'm mostly struck by their professionalism and efficiency and helpfulness, enlivened by occasional quirkiness, humour and passion. Assessing guards' performance involves a degree of subjective judgment, as does hiring the right people in the first place. That kind of assessment can't be contracted out.

 

I suspect outsourced guards will be less knowledgeable, less helpful and more boring, which is a great shame. But the thing that worries me most is that they will resolve the balancing act between protecting pictures and keeping visitors happy by ignoring protection entirely and ducking any potential conflict. They will have no incentive to intervene if people poke at the pictures (happens more often than you'd think), because there's unlikely to be immediately visible damage, and if there is it's unlikely to be traced back to a guard failing in their duty. But every time somebody complains that a guard has told them to step back, it will reflect badly on the contractor. The guards' incentive will be to sit back and smile and the visitors. 

 

As former trustee Jon Snow tweeted, protecting the art is the gallery's key duty. It's not a cost-effective way of securing a service. It's a devious way of evading responsibility. If something goes wrong, they can blame the contractor. The NG's own story is that they need a more flexible workforce to cope with private evening events. I wonder if part of the issue is that they need more supine guards for private hire. The great irony is that they're criticising the union for causing closures, but museums that host private evening events are notorious for closing early and arbitrarily to set up for paid functions; it happens all the time at the V&A, especially. Paying guests take priority. And for all the pious criticism of the effect of strikes on visitors, I've more often been inconvenienced by rooms that are closed because they haven't had enough staff - which is a management and budget problem. The Poussin and Claude rooms seem to be closed half the times I go, and sometimes entire enfilades of the Sainsbury Wing are out of bounds.  

It's all a sad reflection on the new corporate National Gallery. Once the contract is signed they will lose control of the must fundamental function of any gallery. They're putting the collection at risk and harming the visitor experience. And they are evading their own direct and primary responsibility to protect their pictures. Good luck the strikers, I say.

 

At the National Gallery

Picture: National Gallery

This rediscovered Pontormo has been on loan to the National Gallery since 2009. It's a fantastic picture, and it stands out for its fine condition. Its varnish is discoloured, but it's escaped the devastating scrubbing that ruined so many of the NG's own pictures. It's a shame that it's stuck in a corner - it really needs to be appreciated from both sides. Maybe they could swap it with the Franciabianco nearby. It's been published in the Burlington and exhibited at the National Gallery for years, but it's still not as well known as is its desert. Many people neglect it because it's less bright than the over-cleaned pictures nearby, and it's also competing with Raphael, Sebastiano's Raising of Lazarus and Bronzino's Allegory. But it holds its own even in that august company. There's a very damaged Pontormo portrait coming up at Christie's later this month with an estimate of $300k - $500k. This well-preserved one is worth a hundred times more. 

I'm delighted that the awful glazing on the Rembrandts that I complained about recently has gone. They were glazed for an exhibition, using poor-quality glass that gave off distracting reflections, short-changing the exhibition's visitors. The glass was left on after the exhibition, but has now wisely been removed. They now look fantastic - great paintings, well-framed and well-hung.

Picture: National Gallery

There are two new loans in the British Paintings gallery, a Reynolds and a Lawrence. Reynolds' Captain Keppel (above) is from the National Maritime Museum. I don't care for it. The wall text remarks on its debt to the Apollo Belvedere, but to my eyes its attempt at recreating an ancient heroic pose for an eighteenth century English gentleman is faintly ridiculous. Reynolds' art historical appropriations weren't always successful (and I can't forgive him his alleged experimental destruction of a Rembrandt!). The Lawrence, on the other hand, is spectacular. Despite the youth of his subject, Lawrence's dashing pose is wholly successful, and it's brilliantly painted. There's another version next door at the National Portrait Gallery, but I still hope the NG can acquire this one. So much better than the minor little Lawrence they acquired recently, which is quite out of its depth among the highlights of British art that are one display in that room.

Visiting the NG at this time of year is a particular pleasure, so far from tourist season. Its director, Nicholas Penny, is the best of his generation, as you'll see from this wonderful recent interview. They just need to repaint the ghastly purple walls, go back to 10am opening rather than five or ten past, move the Portormo, transfer all of its conservators to the security department and have them guard the pictures rather than 'restore' them to death and buy the Lawrence and the Pontormo. Easy! 

Muckraking

Picture: Google

Art criticism is too often too uncritical, but writing about museums and galleries is an especially hagiographic genre.  I enjoyed Jonathon Conlin's well-received history of the National Gallery, The Nation's Mantelpiece, but it's very much an establishment history.  Stewards of the Nation's Art by Andrea Geddes Poole dishes some dirt.  It's a fascinating account of institutional politics on the boards of the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tate and Wallace Collection between 1890 and 1939, full of great anecdotes that are unreported in the more sanitised official accounts. 

Geddes Poole remorselessly documents the failings of  the Trustees, which were astutely noted by the Treasury.  Treasury official R.S. Meiklejohn is quoted, "I have been told on good authority that one of the Trustees had never heard of Mantegna, another was ignorant of Masaccio, two of them seeing a photographic reproduction of Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne were surprised to learn that the original was in the National Gallery" (p.166, quoting from National Archives T1/11995, Meiklejohn to T.L. Heath 27 June 1916).  A number of trustees are revealed as ignorant, bullying philistines.

The future King Edward VIII was briefly a trustee of the National Gallery, and I'd heard that he was somewhat disengaged.  But I had no idea that the NG acceded to his request to borrow a few pictures for his own house - which he proceeded to re-frame!  It seems only by good fortune that the original frames were found in a bedroom.  It's a great story that she tells well, highlighting the dereliction of duty by the board.  

The research is compelling, but the narrative is spoiled by Geddes-Poole's heavy-handed use of Pierre Bordieu's ideas about cultural capital to tell a version of the well-worn story about declining aristos versus the ascendant middle class. It's hard to justify such a broad claim on a tiny sample of connected individuals who served on museum boards.  The evidence is anecdotal, and there isn't enough to convince that we're seeing anything more than the usual frictions of office politics.  Moreover her unconcealed preference for commoners against aristocrats causes her to judge the self-serving dealer Joseph Duveen too generously, and to glide over many exceptions to the 'rule'.  It's implied that Kenneth Clark was an especially effective Director of the NG because he managed the board so well, but on the other side was ongoing strife with the staff, which is discussed in Conlin's book.

Geddes Poole writes that, "Noting the disparities between the two varieties of cultural capital (inherited and educationally acquired) helps to illuminate the divide between the amateur and the professional.  As professional expertise rose in value at the Treasury and in the director's chair, aristocrats on the board found their cultural capital devalued and their authority threatened." (p. 219)  That's a rather highfalutin way of saying that some people got onto the board because of who they were, others for what they knew - but it's not really such a clear-cut distinction.  Some aristos knew a lot about art, and some commoners had inherited a lot of money and social cachet.  The comment about threatened authority is question-begging.  The more interesting question is how professional expertise in art emerged and became valued, but that is assumed rather than explained.

She claims that "the value of amateur connoisseurship was about much more than knowledge or taste.  The issues concerned power and authority and were fraught with implications for an aristocracy in the process of being eclipsed by an emerging professional class" (p. 219)  This is lazy writing.  What does "fraught with implications" mean?  What implications?  It's just left hanging, and we're expected to nod obligingly at the impossibly vague claim that important things are happening in the background.

The book is also marred by a profusion of errors.  In one sentence she misspells three artists ('Wouvermand', 'Tenier', 'Van Dyke' p.143).  It's Fra Filippo Lippi not Fra Lippo Lippi (p.196), unless she means the poem by Browning rather than the artist.  Ingres painted Madame Moitessier not Madame de Moitessier.  She mentions "a rare Cima da Conegliano head of St Jerome" purchased for the NG by Clark (p.183).  There is a Cima St Jerome at the NG, but it's not just a head and it wasn't bought by Clark.  I simply don't know what she could be referring to.  She describes Titian's Diana and Calisto (sic) as the less  (sic) good of three Titians, when the Venus Anadyomene is clearly the least good (wrong on grammar, spelling and art, p.142).  She weirdly judges Sir Philip Sassoon's collection insignificant because "it was too diverse and did not concentrate on period, artist or country" (p. 25, a judgment repeated on p.200) - so I guess collections like Thyssen's and Frick's must be trivial too.   

The thesis doesn't convince, the social theory is a distraction and the carelessness rankles.  But I truly recommend the book.  There's a wealth of fascinating information, if you can tolerate its failings.  

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. 

The Value of Old Books

Picture: Wikipedia

After visiting the National Gallery today I popped into Quinto on Charing Cross Road and was delighted to find a cheap copy of In the National Gallery: A first introduction to the works of the early Italian Schools as there represented.  By Mrs. C.R.Peers with many illustrations, published by the Medici Society in 1922.  It's a lavish production, leather bound with gilt edges and some early colour pictures.  The wonderfully archaic text hasn't really endured, but its value to me is in the old photographs taken before the disastrous campaign of 'restoration' undertaken by Helmut Ruhemann.  The colour picture of Uccello's Battle of San Romano (recent picture above) is a bit grainy and I can't get a decent scan, but it's quite different from its current appearance.  It shows areas of sky painted over the original landscape (now removed).  In 1922 it was already tragically over-cleaned, with broad flat areas of grey and white in the horse, but even in this grainy picture I discern more subtlety than is present today.

 

Even when they're in the bargain box, books like this rarely seem to sell.  The Internet offers fantastic opportunities for art historical research, but it's a shame to neglect old books. 

Bad Acquisitions

Picture: GalleristNY.com

New acquisitions are always exciting.  For all that I pretend to hate novelty (which I define as more or less anything that happened after about 1820), I still skip through the galleries when I hear of a new loan or acquisition.  Given high prices and small budgets, acquisitions are carefully considered and usually deserve the inevitable plaudits.  But some acquisitions are ill-judged, and have a negative effect on the whole collection.  I don't think there's enough critical commentary about these bad acquisitions.

 

My first nomination is this fine still life by Spaendonck that has been given to the Frick Collection in New York.  It's a perfectly nice painting, but not really consistent with the quality of the Frick.  One of Henry Clay Frick's earliest old master acquisitions was a still life of fruit by Jan van Os, but he didn't include it in his bequest.  I can't believe that this painting is much better.  It will be hard for the Frick ever again to acquire anything of the standard of their supreme masterpieces, but they have still picked up some fine things that complement the collection - like the wonderful Liotard still life donated by Heinemann.  The Spaendonck doesn't make the cut. 

 

A few years ago the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo NY sold off a load of old stuff, including the superb Roman bronze Artemis and the Stag, below (which I saw when it was subsequently on loan to the Met in New York). 

 

Picture: Arts Journal

 

They were raising money to buy contemporary art, including Tracy Emin's Only God Knows I'm Good (below).  I leave you to judge for yourselves.

 

Picture: Albright-Knox

 

Now a controversial nomination to end with.  The National Galleries of London and Edinburgh jointly bought two of the greatest paintings still in private hands - indeed, two of the absolute highlights of western art - Titian's Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto.  Their quality and importance is irreproachable; my beef is with the way they were bought.  First there was an undignified roadshow as these large and fragile paintings were carted around the world to drum up funding.  Then there is the permanent impermanence of joint ownership, meaning that they will be subject to the stress of being packed up and shifted hundreds of miles every few years, in perpetuity.  Sharing the burden of very large purchases has become established practice.  I find it deplorable.    



Degas and Ingres

Picture: NG

I recently noticed that the National Gallery is hanging the early Degas Young Spartans Exercising next to Ingres in the room of earlier nineteenth century art, rather than with the impressionists.  That makes a lot of sense, particularly given that the Ingres next to it  (Pindar and Ictinus, above) was owned by Degas and bought by the National Gallery from his studio sale.  The slightly odd thing is that the wall text makes no reference to that.  It's clearly an intentional hang, but it isn't explained.  The NG generally errs on the side of brevity with its wall text, which is probably safer - we go to see paintings, not read essays.  But sometimes a bit more explanation would be useful.

Titian!

Picture: Guardian

I saw the newly attributed Titian at the National Gallery today.  I hadn't expected much from the pictures, but I think it might be right.  The condition is compromised; the weave of the canvas is very prominent from relining, and there is a lot of abrasion.  I think that accounts for the flatness of the face, which actually has quite a presence despite damage.  The black clothing is undifferentiated and doesn't convey volume well, but again this reflects damage.  The area that I find most disconcerting is the arm, which is awkwardly placed.  It's hung to the left of the celebrated Portrait of a Young Man on loan from the Earl of Halifax, and the latter painting (also an early work) is far superior.  But Titian's paintings do vary rather in quality, partly from workshop participation, and partly because he seems to have had his off days.  The fur is very impressively painted and the impasto has survived surprising well there.  Despite certain deficiencies, I don't think the attribution is unreasonable. 

New Titian?

Picture: Guardian

The Guardian reports on a Titian rediscovery at the NG, followed up at Art History News (which points out that it's actually rather old news anyway).  I haven't seen it yet, so I'll refrain from commenting on the attribution, but a couple of things struck me about the story.

 

First, there is nothing on the NG press page.  They have given this as an exclusive to Jonathan Jones, who got a meeting with the Director and then wrote a gushing article about it.  That kind of media favouritism is very bad form.  Art journalism is already far too incestuous and uncritical. 

 

Second, I rate Jonathan Jones as one of the best in the business, but he says some really stupid things.  I just cannot imagine what makes him insist on the superiority of the NG's Titian collection - it's not even relevant to the story.  On the other hand, I was impressed by the quality of the commentary by readers, who make some astutely critical points.

 

Finally I'm concerned by Nicholas Penny's reported dislike of the term 'attributed', which he considers 'scholarly waffle'.  Waffle is unwelcome, but there's nothing wrong with being scholarly.  And I think the term 'attributed' is indispensable.  It admits to a degree of uncertainty that is often unavoidable.  Better that the NG is open about areas of scholarly debate rather than tries to impose certainty where there is none.