Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin of the Rocks, c. 1483–1486. Oil on wood transferred to canvas, 199 x 122 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Leonardo, closed now, was an extraordinary example of what happens when the genteel horse-trading among museum directors pays off. In this case, nine surviving paintings of the fifteen attributed to Leonardo were assembled, four from the British Museum, four on loan, one from the National Gallery’s own walls, along with dozens of drawings and studies by Leonardo and his contemporaries.
Two of the paintings, the same subject depicted in works completed twenty years apart, had never been seen together: The Louvre’s Virgin of the Rocks (earlier, and arguably by Leonardo alone) and the National Gallery’s own later painting of the same subject.
The two were hung facing one another in a medium-size gallery, to be viewed individually, but a turn of the head allowed comparison. It was a confrontation not to be missed. The London picture is lighter, colder, somehow sharper. The earlier version, from Paris, is more golden, warmer, the mysterious grotto in which the figures are placed seems darker. The children in London look more like bambini; in Paris the Christ child is heavier, more firmly planted on the ground, but also more baby-like. In the earlier work, the angel (is this an angel? Not a trace of wing appears, while in London the wing is distinct) points an explicit finger at John the Baptist. In London, there is no gesture. St. John in Paris has neither cross nor halo; in London he has both. These are just some of the visual notes to be made by standing mid-room and looking back and forth. A room for reverie, but reverie made difficult by the crowds who were also lucky enough to have tickets for the day.
Leonardo da Vinci, Study of Hands, c. 1490. Silverpoint on paper with white heightening, 21.4 x 15 cm. Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 912558.
Over at the Royal Academy, David Hockney’s roiling colors careen through the galleries in a dazzling, expansive show that fills room after room and was so packed on a Sunday morning that you almost couldn’t see the art for the people. Hockney is an artist with a long, varied, hugely successful career whose return to England after years of living in southern California seemed surprising. Surprising, that is, until you see David Hockney: A Bigger Picture.
David Hockney can’t get enough of looking. He is obsessed with what he sees, and with how to show us what he has seen.
He lives in Yorkshire now, and is learning again his ancestral countryside. This is an exhibition devoted almost entirely to landscapes made in the last seven or eight years in that part of the world. Huge multiple canvas works fill gallery walls, each individually bursting with high voltage color and energy. If they are in a way repetitive, each also holds its own surprises, whether in patterns of brushstrokes or the depiction of seasonal changes. Hockney began making drawings on his iPad about a few years ago and by 2011 was creating on a digital screen images printed and displayed in sizes up to roughly five by four feet. The luminosity made possible by the illuminated screen transfers well to these outsize prints, while the hand of the artist is unmistakable. You know immediately it’s a Hockney, despite the new technology.
Leonardo da Vinci, Study for the Head of St James with Architecture, c. 1495. Red chalk, pen and ink on paper, 25.2 x 17.2 cm. Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 912552.
Right now, at the Saatchi Gallery on the Kings Road in Chelsea, is New Art from Germany. It seemed rather tired, frankly. Work by artists already established isn’t particularly groundbreaking and that by newcomers didn’t set the heart racing. But the venue itself is worth a visit. It’s an airy, elegant space with wide-plank blond wood floors and well proportioned rooms, far more generous than Saatchi’s original home in Boundary Road or the ill-advised move to County Hall on the Thames.
Saatchi has a single permanent exhibit, a trompe l’oeil puzzle which fills a two-story room with used engine oil so still, black and reflective it looks like a sheet of obsidian. The gallery-goer walks down a narrow channel into the center of the pool, fully aware of a faint odor of machine oil and the odd optical illusion of looking into infinity, or perhaps nothingness. It’s by Richard Wilson, titled 20:50 for the grade of engine oil used. When I first saw this work, in Boundary Road, you walked in on a ramp above the level of the oil. Looking down into it gave the sensation of flight, or of being slightly unhinged. The channel walk used here is rather less gripping, but still well worth seeing.
We went to the Saatchi on Saturday, for the added advantage of lunch from vendors in Duke of York Square, outside the gallery. In spite of winter chill we happily ate duck confit sandwiches while watching well-heeled Londoners and their dogs, everyone having a grand time.
It’s important, when going to the British Museum, to set out the parameters of one’s visit. You cannot see the whole thing, or anywhere near it, in an afternoon. On this cold Monday morning in January we decided to follow the trail of ancient civilizations from Egypt and Mesopotamia through Greece and Rome. An easy map gave directions; an hour and a half later we were not totally wiped out and had seen some very wonderful things, notably the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon sculptures, and the lesser known but astonishing lion hunt reliefs from an Assyrian palace in Nineveh, about 645-635 BC. The dying lions, particularly a lioness dragging herself along with paralyzed hindquarters, are unforgettable.
We caught the last day of a show of William Morris’s work at 2 Temple Place, overlooking the Thames at the foot of Victoria Embankment. Built in the 1890’s as an estate office for the first Lord Astor, the extraordinary house itself was as interesting as the Morris exhibition. Astor, the richest man in the world at the time, made his office building a showcase of fine craftsmanship with heavy mahogany and carved marble in a pseudo-Elizabethan style. The Morris show focused on the home, with embroideries by William’s daughter May, who ran the embroidery section of the firm from age 23, and tiles by William De Morgan as well as wall coverings, stained glass and furniture. It was the first exhibition in a program that will bring museum collections from outside London to the city.
Chinese New Year, a few days after the fact, was being celebrated with fireworks in Trafalger Square on Sunday. The National Gallery, looming over the square, seemed to look on with tolerant benignity.
London, as usual, has more to do than time to do it in. What a pleasure.
–Jane Durrell
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