Spencer Alley: April 2020

Thursday, April 30, 2020

Italian Paintings in British Collections - Early Renaissance

Simone Martini
Christ discovered in the Temple
1342
tempera on panel
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Bernardo Daddi
Crucifixion, with Saints
1348
tempera on panel
Courtauld Gallery, London

Lorenzo Monaco
Coronation of the Virgin
ca. 1407-1409
tempera on panel
National Gallery, London

Paolo Uccello
The Annunciation
ca. 1420-25
tempera on panel
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Sassetta
St Francis renounces his Earthly Father
ca. 1437-44
tempera on panel
National Gallery, London

from Le Tombeau des Lutteurs

It is a tragedy, yes, but a confusing one. What happened to the wrestlers and where have they gone? Loulou the Pomeranian would love to know. Outdoors the hills are buried in snow, but inside a rose, a rose full-blown, a roomful of rose. The bloom and its shadow overtaking the space. The bloom proposing an impossible tomb. Of the Tachists, the master said to his friend Harry, "They paint white on white, and they believe that this is an achievement." Harry said, "I dare you to paint a white rose in a white room with a window looking onto a landscape covered with snow." Now this – which even Loulou, color-blindish, can tell is red – is the master's grandiose response to an intoxicating challenge. Synesthetically, the rose fills Loulou's pom ears with the echoes of torch songs, longing for the wrong. Loulou is practically drunk from the smell: a heady pink . . .

– Kathleen Rooney (2017)

Francesco Pesellino
The Annunciation
ca. 1450-55
tempera on panel
Courtauld Gallery, London

Cosmè Tura
The Muse Calliope
ca. 1455-60
tempera and oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Giovanni di Paolo
Baptism of Christ
ca. 1460
tempera on panel
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Piero and Antonio del Pollaiuolo
Martyrdom of St Sebastian
1475
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Ercole de’ Roberti
Pietà
ca. 1482-86
tempera and oil on panel
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Bernardino Butinone
Christ disputing with the Doctors
ca. 1480-90
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Carlo Crivelli
The Annunciation, with St Emedius
1486
tempera and oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Giovanni Santi (father of Raphael)
Virgin and Child
ca. 1488
tempera and oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Filippino Lippi
Wounded Centaur
ca. 1490
tempera and oil on panel
Christ Church, University of Oxford

Luca Signorelli
The Circumcision
1491
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
National Gallery, London

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Anonymous Italian Paintings in British Collections

Anonymous Italian Artist
St Sebastian
(left-hand panel of diptych)
ca. 1480-1520
oil on panel
York City Art Gallery

Anonymous Italian Artist
St Roch
(right-hand panel of diptych)
ca. 1480-1520
oil on panel
York City Art Gallery

Anonymous Italian Artist
St Hugh
ca. 1525-1600
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Anonymous Italian Artist
Portrait of the Protonotary Giovanni Giuliano
ca. 1530-40
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Anonymous Italian Artist working in Venice
The Entombment
16th century
oil on canvas
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, West Midlands

Anonymous Italian Artist
Youth playing a Violin
16th century
oil on canvas
National Trust, Attingham Park, Shropshire

Anonymous Italian Artist
St John the Baptist
ca. 1635-60
oil on canvas
York City Art Gallery

Anonymous Italian Artist working in Bologna
St Cecilia
17th century
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Anonymous Italian Artist
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
17th century
oil on canvas
Temple Newsam House, Leeds

Though detailed provenances for most of the paintings in this group are not readily available, their path from Italy to Britain was likely similar – acquired by wealthy Grand Tourists as souvenirs, and believed by their new northern owners to have originated from the hand of one or another big-name dead Italian artist. Thereafter proudly displayed and revered at home as Raphaels, as Titians, as Guercinos, as Caravaggios. Gradually, by gift or bequest or purchase, the pictures would have migrated from private families to public collections of one sort or another, where they received the severer scrutiny of curators and art historians. At that point the assigned famous-artist-name would in each case have been stripped away by force – either for lack of evidence or for obvious inaptness – and the works consigned to a limbo-land of the still-beautiful but relatively insignificant.

Anonymous Italian Artist
The Lamentation
17th century
oil on canvas
Bridgwater Town Hall, Somerset

Anonymous Italian Artist working in Rome
St Bruno praying before a Crucifix
ca. 1650-1700
oil on canvas
Christ Church, University of Oxford

Anonymous Italian Artist
Samson and Delilah
17th century
oil on canvas
Wolverhampton Art Gallery, West Midlands

Anonymous Italian Artist
Pietà
17th century
oil on canvas
York City Art Gallery

Anonymous Italian Artist
River God
17th century
oil on canvas
Temple Newsam House, Leeds

Anonymous Italian Artist
Cleopatra dissolving the Pearl
ca. 1795-1805
oil on canvas
York City Art Gallery

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Views of Rome and Environs by British Painters

Joseph Wright of Derby
The Colosseum, Daylight
ca. 1789
oil on canvas
Derby Museum and Art Gallery

George Augustus Wallis
Landscape near Rome
1794
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Charles Lock Eastlake
Trajan's Forum, Rome
1821
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Edward Thomas Daniell
Ruins in Rome
ca. 1830
oil on panel
Norfolk Museums

Charles Heath Wilson
Arch of Titus, Rome
1835
oil on canvas
Moorlands House, Staffordshire

David Roberts
Piazza Navona, Rome
1857
oil on canvas
Museums Sheffield, Yorkshire

David Roberts
Interior of St Peter's, Rome
1862
oil on canvas
Hackney Museum, London

Edward Angelo Goodall
The Pescheria in the Ghetto, Rome
1873
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

from Sirens

My transgressions pile against the garden wall
(built when Rome began to weaken, scarred

by a cannonball). I gossiped; I snubbed
a dinner guest. I watch until the wall writhes

with awful feral cats fed by shrunken widows
and the odd librarian. I've begun to be depleted

by your absence; one of love's worst symptoms.
For years, I'd had the sense to hold myself apart.

I've been here long enough to kill
two mint plants and a lavender,

then resurrect their better part.
I'd like to let you die on the vine.

– Eliza Griswold (2013)

George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle
Baths of Caracalla, Rome
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Government Art Collection, London

Duncan Grant
In the Garden of the Hotel de Russie, Rome
1920
oil on canvas
University of Hull Art Collection, Yorkshire

Vanessa Bell
The Forum, Rome
ca. 1935
oil on canvas
Charleston House, Lewes, Sussex

Carel Weight
Troops playing with Children, Borghese Gardens, Rome
1945
oil on canvas
Government Art Collection, London

William Crosbie
Via Appia (Distant View of Rome)
1965
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow

David Cooper
Winter Morning, Rome
1988
oil on canvas
Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland

Peter Edge
Interior, Rome
2007
acrylic on board
Grosvenor Museum, Chester

Monday, April 27, 2020

American Paintings in British Collections

Nancy Spero
Lovers
1962
oil on canvas
Tate Modern, London

John Baldessari
Hope (Blue) supported by a Bed of Oranges (Life): Amid a Context of Allusion
1991
oil, vinyl, and acrylic paint on photographs
Tate Modern, London

Man Ray
Pisces
1938
oil on canvas
Tate Modern, London

Robert Rauschenberg
Almanac
1962
oil, acrylic and silkscreen on canvas
Tate Modern, London

Morris Louis
Golden Age
1958
acrylic on canvas
Ulster Museum, Belfast

Morris Louis
Phi
1960-61
acrylic on canvas
Tate Modern, London

Jasper Johns
0 through 9
1961
oil on canvas
Tate Modern, London

The Present

It was a vertical time. It was the expression, a spirit giving way onto an electric barren. We circled and were encircled and had no cause. It was a time of the self come on in a field of apparatuses. It was vignetted by sleep, and the sleep was in its center breached. Cold moving through the smell of gas. The big-leafed enclosure. It was a time that clattered at the horizons, whose recounting was already foreclosed, as in a numeral smudged in powder, as in a thin water making of the atmosphere a disc. It was a time of guzzling. A time amid what has been kept, a time of calendared trust, repeated appeal, erasures of flight. We begin with a weedy stem drawn against the winter sky. Dear hierophant, our decision initialed. The muffled sound of the closet and the machine.

– Ryo Yamaguchi (2018)