Jacques Daret, The Adoration of the Kings, c. 1434-35. Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. It’s December 1st – let the Advent Calendars be opened! I wrote one in 2020, and if you want something to read every day, and weren’t with me two years ago, I wrote about a single detail from Gossaert’s glorious AdorationContinue reading “179 – Surviving treasures”
Category Archives: Jesus
178 – No crib for a bed
Jacques Daret, The Nativity, c. 1434-45. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. If you have ever enjoyed the obligation of seeing your child, or a friend’s child, or relative’s child – or anybody’s child for that matter – in a school Nativity play (now curiously abbreviated to ‘their Nativity’ as if you were about to watch theirContinue reading “178 – No crib for a bed”
173 – Illuminating
Eadfrith, Chi-Rho page, The Lindisfarne Gospels (Cotton MS Nero DIV, f. 29r), c. 700. British Library London. Today I’m going to look at one page of one book. It is, surely, one of the most spectacular pages of what is – according to every account you read – one of the most spectacular survivals fromContinue reading “173 – Illuminating”
168 – Michelangelo: Leaning back, looking forward
Michelangelo, Jonah, c. 1511-12. Sistine Chapel, Vatican City. I’m just about to start a new series of lectures, Almost All of Michelangelo, and we kick off this Monday 5 September with The Paintings. Unlike my previous online talks, these will be two hour sessions, and will last from 5.30-7.30pm – with a ten minute gapContinue reading “168 – Michelangelo: Leaning back, looking forward”
163 – Mary, multi-tasking
Dirk Bouts, The Virgin and Child, c. 1465. National Gallery, London. I love it when I go to an exhibition which makes me think about something in a completely new way – or for that matter, which makes me look at something differently, or even properly, for the first time. That is certainly what happenedContinue reading “163 – Mary, multi-tasking”
162 – Betrayal Redeemed
Cornelia Parker, Thirty Pieces of Silver, 1988. Tate. Given that my current series of talks is called Looking in Different Ways, Cornelia Parker, about whom I will be talking this Monday, 18 July at 6pm, is a perfect choice. She sees the world in such a completely different way to most artists, and, with allContinue reading “162 – Betrayal Redeemed”
161 – Negative Spaces
Sybil Andrews, Via Dolorosa, 1935. British Museum, London. As my next two talks are entitled Negative Spaces, I wanted to write about the concept, and explain the reasons why I am using it. And I want to do this because the artists to whom I am dedicating the first talk, Mary Beale and Sybil AndrewsContinue reading “161 – Negative Spaces”
Some Virtues
Andrea del Verrocchio, Model for the Funeral Monument for Cardinal Niccolò Forteguerri, c. 1476, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The Sculpture course Form, Function, Material and Memory is rapidly drawing to a close. The last talk will be this Monday 27 June at 6pm, when we will consider Memory – Something to Remember. This will look atContinue reading “Some Virtues”
156 – Second helpings at the Feast
Donatello, The Feast of Herod, 1423-7. Baptismal Font, Battistero di San Giovanni Battista, Siena. ‘Please, sir, I want some more.’ OK, so it seems extremely unlikely that these words, said by Oliver Twist in the eponymous novel by Charles Dickens, and so often misquoted, nor indeed anything like them, would ever have been uttered atContinue reading “156 – Second helpings at the Feast”
155 – Pre-Announced
Raphael, The Annunciation, c. 1506-7. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. I’ve said in two different lectures (to two different audiences) that I intend to write about this drawing, thus announcing the Annunciation. I’d not seen it before my first visit to the glorious Raphael exhibition at the National Gallery, but it grabbed my attention, and instantly became myContinue reading “155 – Pre-Announced”
dr richard stemp 