Siena

 Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 ‒1350

Siena Cathedral

The National Gallery in London is currently inviting us to:

Step into Siena. It’s the beginning of the 14th century in central Italy. A golden moment for art, a catalyst of change. Artists Duccio, Simone Martini and the brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti are forging a new way of painting.....

Il Palazzo Pubblico, Siena

And it is a stunning exhibition:

Duccio:  The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Angels

Little is known about Duccio di Buoninsegna, the greatest painter of the Sienese school, who was active from 1278 to 1318. His masterpiece is the Maestà, a double-sided altarpiece created between 1308 and 1311.  

The whole piece was about five metres high and five metres wide and it has a wide central panel with the Virgin and Child adored by the patrons of Siena and surrounded by saints and angels, all created with tempera and gold leaf. The main panel and the bulk of the narrative scenes are now in the Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana, Piazza del Duomo, Siena.

Duccio was probably assisted in this work by his pupil Simone Martini (c 1284 - 1344) who did several frescos in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, among other works, and Pietro Lorenzetti, who painted this Polyptych in 1320:

And his brother Ambrogio, who painted this Annunciation in 1344, with Gabriel and Mary's words tooled into the gold leaf:

The exhibition has been organised by the National Gallery and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and contains over a hundred exhibits made by artisans working in Siena, Naples, Avignon and beyond, and is open until the 22nd of June.

The Marriage of the Virgin 
Niccolò di Buonaccorso (active 1355 - 1388)

So, with minds full of golds and blues, we leave the exhibition and walk out along the avenue at Middelharnis....

The Avenue at Middelharnis - Meindert Hobbema (1689)

Into Hyde park, where the blue pedalos are out on the Serpentine:

Homeward 2020 - Arpita Singh

Under the blues and golds of the Serpentine Pavilion 2025,

A Capsule in Time
Marina Tabassum

And in the Serpentine South Gallery in Kensington Gardens, Giuseppe Penone  is showing Thoughts in the Roots, with a golden  representation of a respiratory system in a room lined with laurel leaves.  More Italy; more gold....

Respirare L'Ombra (To Breathe the Shadow)
Giuseppe Penone (Garessio, Italy, 1947 - )

While outside, we walk by three life-size bronze trees, one of them shattered by lightning to reveal its golden heart:

Albero folgorato (Thunderstruck Tree) 2012
Giuseppe Penone

The sun begins to slip away, golden against the lapis lazuli blue of sky and Serpentine, Sienese colours at their best,

And Albert sits quietly under his angels, golden against the fading blue,

The Albert Memorial

I take refuge in my lodging, which glows with gold,

To dream of darkling Siena in my golden slumber.

San Domenico, Siena

Inside this northern summer's fold

The fields are full of naked gold,

Broadcast from heaven on lands it loves;

The green veiled air is full of doves;

Soft leaves that sift the sunbeams let

Light on the small warm grasses wet

Fall in short broken kisses sweet,

And break again like waves that beat

Round the sun's feet.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Siena

A Group of Four Poor Clares
Ambrogio Lorenzetti (c 1325)

My favourite place; I look forward to returning:

Il Duomo di Siena

Homage to Hockney

Hockney's Eye

Hockney's Eye is the title of an exhibition (until 29 August 2022) at The Fitzwilliam Museum and The Heong Gallery in Cambridge.  The exhibition is the first to explore the many ways of seeing in the art of David Hockney. 

Beautiful Tulips

And I am in Cambridge to see this show.  The first time I have been out of Norfolk for months....  The first time on a train this year.  And, Oh, the crowds!  I thought there was a pandemic on, but it seems as if I am the only one cautious enough to mask my face....

Oh, now I see what a halo is!

Annunciation II, after Fra Angelico

Nothing and no-one can better Fra Angelico.  The delicacy of his mid-fifteenth century frescoed Annunciation on the wall of the convent of San Marco in Florence is lace dipped in champagne to soothe a fevered heart.  Apparently the awareness of space shown in the picture signals the emergence of art from the Gothic to the Renaissance.  The wonderful thing about Hockney's take on this is that while he captures the dynamic between Gabriel and Mary his is not a mere copy nor a paltry likeness - he changes the perspective without losing the narrative, and freshens the colour to delight the modern eye.....  Cosimo de Medici may not have been impressed, but times have changed....

This exhibition is integrated with the permanent  show at the Fitzwilliam, so that Hockney's pieces are a part of the History of Art, at one with the development of representational painting.  The convention of attempting to transfer three dimensions to a flat picture is something that all artists have struggled with, before and after an understanding of perspective was developed.  

My all time favourite painting is Meindert Hobbema's The Avenue at Middelharnis, (usually on display in the National Gallery, London).  I am not entirely sure what attracts me to this picture, though there is certainly something about the relaxed attitudes of the figures here and there in sight that bring a sense of ease.  And then there is the disappearing avenue with its wavering cart tracks....  

Anyway, it transpires that this is also one of Hockney's faves, and here he is paying his respect to the Old Master....

After Hobbema (Useful Knowledge). 2017

Again, it is not a copy, nor is it a clever reinterpretation.  It is a revisiting and a way of recognising the genius of the original.  Perhaps (?) it is like playing Bach on the piano - not how it was written to be, but a way to enjoy this in the modern age?

Another examination of perspective and vanishments is Le Parc des Sources, Vichy. 1970.  Here, an empty chair invites the onlooker to join Hockney's friends in admiring the distance.

And sure enough, we are soon wondering if we may join the party.....

I wish I was there.....

Hockey himself is very present in this exhibition.  There are videos of him explaining his work - notably one on the Camera Lucida - and there are panels which show the entire process of creation on his iPad.  This sequence shows just three moments in a continuum where the artist builds an impression of a riverside:

 

I tell you I love it.  In this age where darkness falls at dawn every day, it is uplifting to be reminded that there is light in life.  It is wonderful to engage with the artist in his enjoyment of a frosty lane as captured by nine cameras mounted on his car:

And it is magnificent to see his wide angle view of the Grand Canyon, where perspective becomes almost 180 degrees and colour is rainbow simplification....  

Somehow you can taste the aridity....

Grand Canyon I. 2017

Hockney himself also welcomes you to The Heong Gallery, where he is discussing oriental art by the gardens of Downing College:

While at the end of the hall I find Viewers Looking at a Readymade with Skull and Mirrors, 2018, an extraordinary invention of mirrored stillness.....

It's a picture that brings to mind Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas....

But that just goes to show how our eyes are connected to our brains and to our hearts.  As the exhibition notes suggest, We see things through the filters of memory and feeling....  And we are all different.

I do recommend this exhibition. When times are difficult, it is good to know there is another world..... And it is good not to dwell for a moment on which world is illusory.

*    *    *

All the artworks shown here, with the exception of Meindert Hobbema's The Avenue at Middelharnis, are copyright of David Hockney - I have taken the liberty of sharing them simply to encourage others to visit the exhibition and to admire, as I do, his art.  I have no financial or professional interest in this.

[Should anyone object to the use of these images I will immediately take them down, with apologies for my presumption.]

A shadow admires

Thank you David.....

Holland - The Netherlands - Part 1

Windmills of the mind.....

Windmills (or rather Wind Turbines) at Enkhuizen haven, the IJsselmeer behind.

Only half the Kingdom of the Netherlands is more than one metre above sea level, and eighteen per cent of its surface area is water. With a population of nearly seventeen million the number of people per square kilometre of land is nearly five hundred, which puts it up close to Bangladesh and South Korea in the population density stakes.....

Low Country: Lelystad from the Houtribdijk

It was not always so.  The Dutch Golden Age, in the 17th century, saw economic growth with the Dutch East and West India Companies creating colonies and trading posts across the globe; settlements included New Amsterdam in North America and the Cape Colony in South Africa; art and science flourished.  But after the boom came something of a bust, and from Napoleon to Hitler, despite being a constitutional monarchy since 1815 and a parliamentary democracy since 1848, the Netherlands have had their share of troubles.

Jacob van Ruisdael, View of Haarlem with bleaching grounds, 1670 - 1675

The population of The Netherlands has almost quadrupled in the last hundred years, and perhaps this has driven the extraordinary developments in land reclamation and modernisation. Despite the crowded nature of the country, it is one of the world's ten leading exporting countries and food production is its largest industry. Rotterdam is the busiest port in Europe. In addition The Netherlands is the only country which has an action plan to cope with rising sea levels due to global warming. It has a golden past, but is also thinking ahead.

View of Delft, 1660 - 1661, Johannes Vermeer

In the centre of the administrative capital, The Hague, imaginative new buildings dwarf the bars and restaurants around the Plein....

But the great conurbations are all well and good; for the moment I yearn for the sense of space that was caught by those masters of the landscape.  

Meindert Hobbema, Wooded Landscape with Cottages, 1665

Meindert Hobbema's The Avenue at Middelharnis is one of my favourite paintings in the National Gallery, London, with its extraordinary symmetry and depth.   His pictures teem with life, from people tending their gardens, to riders with their dogs, but all human activity is secondary to the immensity of the sky and the growth of the trees.  Hobbema was apparently a pupil of his friend, Jacob van Ruisdael, but the influence of the latter's uncle, Salomon van Ruysdael is also noticeable in his work.

Salomon van Ruysdael, River Landscape with Ferry, 1649

It must have been comparatively easy to walk out of Amsterdam, or Utrecht, or Leiden, and find views of rural scenes in that Golden Age. Today, apart from urbanisation, there are 139,295 kilometres of roads in the Netherlands, as well as 3,013 kilometres of rail track.  There are said to be nine million cars (and eighteen million bicycles) in the country, so finding a quiet spot is a test of initiative - but it is not impossible.....  

Church and Windmill at Loenen aan de Vecht

With so little variation in topography (the highest point in The Netherlands is little over three hundred metres above sea level) and the absence of true forest (the last original natural woods were felled in 1871) it is not easy to find an interesting landscape. Heathland, meadows, mud flats, farmlands and non-native plantations are the order of the day, but still the great painters of the past created memorable images.....

Landscape with Two Oaks, Jan van Goyen, 1641

And their more modern followers have not done so badly either.....

Lake near Loosdrecht, Willem Roelofs, 1887

Which is not far from where I find this....

Loosdrecht Lakes

And, less conventionally, this....

What has saved the landscape of The Netherlands is the presence of water.  It is everywhere, in one shape or form or another - canal, river, lake, rain, snow, ice..... Reflections of the sky in Leiden brighten the place and also add space and air.....

Elsewhere the shimmering gleam of large expanses of water and sky unite to create a feeling of liberation.....

Though there is little doubt that the addition of a mill, in this case by a one of the great modern Dutch masters, makes for a better composition.....

Oostzijdse Mill along the Gein River, 1903, Piet Mondrian

This has been a fascinating journey, in part beyond my expectations.  Initially I wanted to see where Rembrandt walked, and sketched, but in this I was thwarted by the modern world.  However, the streets of old Leiden where Rembrandt grew up are still quiet and evocative of the past......  Some of the houses like these around the Pieterskerk were where the original Pilgrim Fathers settled, escaping religious persecution in England.  From Leiden some of them, including an ancestor of Barack Obama, set sail on the Speedwell, in July 1620, to meet with the Mayflower in Plymouth before attempting to cross the Atlantic (the Speedwell had to be abandoned in Dartmouth).

In wandering across the IJsselmeer, and driving down toward Utrecht, I also came across another surprise.  A slightly dated Italian TCI guide book mentioned, in a footnote, that the village of Laren contained a small art gallery in the former home of an American couple, William and Anna Singer. Here they had built a villa, which they called Wild Swans, in 1911, and, with inheritance from his father's Pittsburgh steelworks, he started collecting paintings of the Hague School and contemporary Dutch artists.  

I was in for a further surprise, however.  With car parks overflowing and a buzzing crowd in the foyer, I was not to find the works of Ferdinand Hart Nibbrig (1866 - 1915), who painted the village pond nearby, and his contemporaries....

The Koesweerd Pond, Ferdinand Hart Nibbrig

But a major exhibition dedicated solely to the life and work of Leo Gestel (1881 - 1941) who, together with Piet Mondrian, was one of the most prominent Dutch Modernists.

Gestel spent time in Paris, and in Majorca, Germany, Italy and Flanders, and he experimented with pointillism, fauvism, cubism and futurism (among other -isms!) Several of his works depict Dutch landscapes, some in summery Cezanne-like colour....

Others in monochrome, in keeping with the current season....

But others are portraits, dazzling in their colours....

This was a surprise indeed.  We had come a long way from the Golden Age, and my intention to find and emulate the early masters had come unstuck.  It was time to withdraw, and to rest a while within the warmth and depth of a Dutch interior.  Just down the road, unnervingly on the Brink (which I am relieved to learn means the village green) we found Cafe t' Bonte Paard (The Spotted Horse), where thick pea soup and dark beer smoothed over the wrinkles of post-modernism.  

Meanwhile, out on the IJsselmeer, those windmills are still turning, patiently waiting for the next master.....