Italians do it better...
Finding myself with an afternoon to spare today I decided to go and see the exhibition at the Laing which has just opened. It's called Love and is touring from the National Gallery in London featuring works from Vermeer, Goya and Tracey Emin.
I have to admit, the Vermeer was a little disappointing, it was a very good painting but it seemed to lack soul, I couldn't believe the girl as a real person. The Goya I found more aesthetically pleasing but still somewhat prosaic, like something you'd have on the wall of the parlour. Progressing onwards I was given literal shivers by reading a small notice about the provenance of one work - they're basically looking to find which poor, most likely doomed Jew it was stolen from, it came to them via Adolf Hitler's personal collection. The thought that he had appreciated the same work of beauty that we now look at in the gallery is somehow grotesque - that that evil man possessed the canvas as his own, it kind of bore down the weight of his crimes and robbed the work of it's artistic significance by vesting it with another more alarming one. Then there was a Turner that proved me wrong in some of my past criticism's by demonstrating the scale and the amazing ethereal quality of figures he could make with light.
The real moment of the afternoon, however, was when I was ambling along the back wall of the exhibition. I came to the info card before I came to the painting. It read Raphael - The Madonna of the Pinks. I have no idea why a painting as famous and valuable (the national paid £22 million for it) as this wasn't billed, but I'm glad it wasn't. Up until that point it was an interesting exhibition, then you suddenly stumble on a genuine masterpiece as if by accident. It's like going to open mic night at the pub and mid way through seeing Dylan step up, or turning up to a small town theatre and seeing Michael Caine step up to the stage.
In a show with Vermeer, Goya, Turner and more the two artists that stood out most were the Raphael and the Venetian Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's The Banquet of Cleopatra. Add to that the fact that on passing the new sculpture in the lobby my first thought was "No one has really been able to sculpt since Bernini..." I have came to the conclusion that Italians just do it better.
Comments
And yes, I agree with your assessment :)
Wonderful! It's so cool that you got to see them.
And yes, I think the Italians would agree with you! ;-)
And yes, I thought you might agree with my assessment. I'm sure Bobble will to if she comes by. :P
I remember see some of Raphael's work at Brera Gallery and the Vatican and I was just stuck dumb by his genius. His Sposalizio della Vergine was stunning.
The Brera is a fantastic gallery and I remember being unable to stop looking at two paintings: Andrea Mantegna's 'Lamantation over the Dead Christ' and Giovanni Bellini's Pieta . The virgin looks absolutely distressed in Mantegna's work.
If you ever get the chance to see Luca Signorelli's chapel at the Duomo in Orvieto then go, it's one of the best fresco sequences I have ever seen. I know it is heretical to say but I think it's far superior to the Sistine chapel. It's haunting.
That chapel does look entirely amazing. It's fantastic how much creativeness must have came all from that short period.
I love the quote from the Third Man comparing Switzerland to Italy under the Borgias, have you heard it?
Anyway, this is beside the point, clearly I need to pay someone to come daub my ceiling.