Leonardo in London; Quick or You'll Miss It. Be Prepared!

The Guardian have reported on the forthcoming exhibition, (mentioned previously in this blog) of Leonardo Da Vinci, to be held in the National Gallery, London, as 'the most complete display of Leonardo's rare surviving paintings ever held'. Questions are being asked however, as to whether the 'Block Buster' exhibitions of recent times have come to an end, with the National Gallery placing a limit on admissions. Stephen Moss asks whether the packed crowds, limited viewing of art works and timed entry will become a thing of the past in favour of a more civilised and heightened experience of exhibition viewing.

In the past 12 months or so it has been notable, the comments made by exhibition reviewers and visitors a like, as to the monstrous conditions one has to put up with just to see a temporary show. Pushing swarms of visitors, waiting in line to see a masterpiece, hundreds of camera flashes going off at the art works peril; as if some kind of celebrity were in front of the jostling crowds. It has come to be an expected side effect of wanting to go to see any major exhibition in the U.K and has even been coined with its own terminology; Gallery Rage!

The recent Gauguin exhibition at the Tate Modern has caused a stir in the ethos of the Gallery Block Buster mentality. Although the exhibition (see links below) provided a record high in business for the museum, it was also the most reported on for over crowding and disgruntled visitors who paid, queued and did not see paintings due to the rest of the art loving mass accompanying them in the Gallery.

Stephen Moss reports;

The problem lies with the whole notion of the "blockbuster", which is just a desperately hoped-for money-spinner for cash-strapped galleries. Colin Tweedy, chief executive of Arts & Business, argued recently that the era of blockbuster shows was coming to an end. And he welcomed their phasing out. "The blockbuster model is killing art," he said. "It is not the right way to see great artists. In the next five years, museums will stop doing these exhibitions because they are too much trouble. The blockbuster is an old model. The creators of culture have to think in a different way."

Art shows are like any other aspect of the cultural business. Galleries put together a show, try to create a buzz, hope the exhibition will come to be seen as an "event". The hucksterism is pretty disgusting when you think about it. They've introduced timed tickets to try to even out the peaks and troughs in attendance, but timed tickets are pretty disgusting too. They assume that a two-hour stint is the norm and won't let you back in if you fancy having lunch and then taking another look.

This is, as Tweedy says, no way to see art. It is a branch of commerce devised for the benefit of the gallery, and playing on the exhibition-goer's fantasy that by spending two hours in the company of Gauguin or Leonardo he or she can get a meaningful take on the artist. Far better to go and look at a couple of Gauguins in a gallery and live with them for a while, or go regularly to see the couple of Leonardos in the National Gallery's permanent exhibition.

Galleries which stage blockbuster shows are peddling a myth, and they know it. Like Tweedy, we should welcome the fact that the age of the blockbuster is ending. We need to study more carefully paintings that are readily to hand.

The bad publicity received by the Tate Modern seems to have been a lesson learned for the National Gallery, who have opted to reduce the maximum persons allowed entry per hour, from 230 to 180, but this exhibition will draw crowds of art lovers from all over the world, whether limited numbers or not.

The exhibition is the first and best opportunity to view not one, but seven of the artists masterpieces in one exhibition. The curator of the exhibition, Luke Syson, describes it as an achievement for any Gallery to get just one of Leonardo's 14 authenticated paintings, let alone seven, which he states is 'miraculous'.

In his Guardian article; 'Leonardo da Vinci show at National Gallery to limit visitor numbers', Mark Brown interviews the National Gallery's director, Nicholas Penny, who called the exhibition;

"a great triumph in diplomacy" with paintings leaving galleries in Italy and France for the first time....

The show will focus on Leonardo's paintings and drawings while he was court painter to Milan's ruler, Ludovico Sforza. The National Gallery already has the recently restored Virgin on the Rocks and is being loaned astonishing works to exhibit alongside, including Portrait of a Musician from Milan, Saint Jerome from the Vatican and La Belle Ferronière from the Louvre. There will also be what Syson called "one of the most beautiful pictures that was ever painted by anybody anywhere" as the show's centrepiece – Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, or The Lady with an Ermine, which is regarded by many as the first truly modern portrait and is being loaned by the National Museum in Krakow...

Then there are the drawings. More than 50 are being borrowed including 33 owned by the Queen that were purchased during the reign of Charles II and left in the bottom of a chest until they were rediscovered in 1778, during the reign of George III.

Those visitors hoping to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa however, will be dissapointed as the Mona Lisa was painted during Leonardo's time in Florence and therefore does not fall under the exhibition's brief of Leonardo's court paintings at Milan. Brown adds;

Not that anyone would ask the Louvre for a loan. "The collecting staff there would rather rush round naked than lend it," said Syson

Due to the recent back lash aimed at the Tate for the Gauguin debacle, the National Gallery understandably wants to prepare visitors for the exhibition; what to expect and how to get the best experience out of the event as possible;

"There is going to be tremendous demand and we have taken a number of unusual steps to try and ensure people are not too disappointed," said Penny. "It is very important that people study our website before they come to the exhibition. They can download all the information that people stand and read beforehand. The whole experience can be properly prepared for."

...The show opens in November, but the gallery is giving people plenty of time to book in advance by opening sales on Tuesday. Those hoping to buy tickets on the day are being told they face disappointment. The show will run for only three months because, understandably, the other galleries want their paintings back, but it will be open until 10pm on Fridays and Saturdays and 7pm on Sundays. Opening times will be extended further in the last two weeks.

So with all this in mind; forewarned visitors, pre-planned limited numbers and an advertising machine mill stating 'this is not a block buster' that works at drawing visitors just as well as the block buster 'must - see' campaign does, how will the average art lover prepare themselves for the trial of the gallery visit? The Guardian's Tim Dowling has the answer!

In his article; 'How to beat gallery rage' Mr Dowling gives a few tips on handling the masses;

▶ Go at odd hours. Try first thing in the morning or last thing at night (blockbuster shows sometimes stay open until 9 or 10pm in order to accommodate everyone). Even if it's still crowded, it will be less fraught.

▶ Approach the exhibit non- sequentially. Visitors tend to bunch up at the first few works of art, driven by a sense that they have to see everything in order. Jump ahead to less crowded works, or even follow the whole route backwards. This should stop you suffering from gallery rage, although you may cause some.

▶ Skip the audio tour. The evil voices in your headphones will only tell you to go where everyone else on the audio tour is going. This invariably leads to traffic problems around paintings about which the audio guide has something to say.

▶ Re-contextualise the event. Pretend you've come to see a performance installation about crowd control and the limits of human endurance and that the art on the walls is, if anything, a needless distraction.

▶ Wear a high-visibility vest. It makes you look official; people will be afraid to jostle you.

▶ Cultivate a taste for the overlooked, the offputting, the little understood and the poorly reviewed. Your best hope of seeing a one-off collection of masterpieces in peace comes whenever some critic has the foresight to describe the show as "badly curated".

▶ Take advantage of adverse conditions. Even over-subscribed exhibitions become suddenly accessible during freak snowstorms, transport strikes and violent protests. Watch the news, pick your moment and bring extra water in case you get beaten up or kettled on the way home.

▶ Stay home and watch TV. Someone has to. Don't worry about being a philistine; just be thankful you live in a country where museum overcrowding is an actual problem.

And remember;

don't play the galleries' game by falling for the idea that these big shows are "must-sees". For a start, you can barely see them.

Tickets for the Exhibition go on sale on 10th May 2011, better be quick!

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vinci-painter-at-the-court-of-milan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/may/09/blockbuster-exhibition-national-leonardo?intcmp=239

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/may/09/leonardo-da-vinci-national-gallery?INTCMP=SRCH

http://www.guardian.co.uk/search?q=how+to+beat+gallery+rage&target=guardian

Little Apology & Sneak Peak!

Just a note to apologise for the absence recently but fear not! I have not given up or gone away, well i did, but it was all in search of blogging adventures and I will report to you shortly!

Here's a sneak preview of whats to come...

Castle of the Month for Febuary:- Caernarfon, Wales

Castle of the Month for March:- Raglan, Wales

A Caravaggio spotlight into his dark past ...&...

A review of the T.V series and Book entitled Medieval Lives by the talented Terry Jones!!

Also, if your very lucky, you may get a personality of the month for this month too! But only if your good.

Keep Watching...........

Jan Gossaert's Renaissance Exhibition Reviews

Jonathan Jones and Laura Cumming, both of the Guardian Arts online, write the following reviews on the exhibition, which i am about to visit this weekend! I will let you know my thoughts next week!

Jonathan Jones writes;

In 15th-century Flanders, late medieval painters performed miracles that in some ways left their Italian contemporaries far behind, offering microscopically precise views of towns and interiors, discovering the magic of human character in lifelike portraits. So why aren't there crowds in front of Van Eyck's mesmerising Madonna of Chancellor Rolin to match those in front of the Mona Lisa?

This seems especially odd when you consider the work of Jan Gossaert, one of the first Flemish artists to visit Rome and take on the challenge of the classical nude. He started his career at the time Michelangelo was unveiling David, but gave the majestic human body portrayed in stone by the ancients and rediscovered by Italians his own rollicking, saucy finesse in paint. Throughout this exhibition, you see his northern gothic tendencies, his delight in twisting architectural forms and luxurious draperies, intertwine with the Renaissance passion for human proportions, Greek myth and drawing – skills that he learned by travelling to Rome and sketching ancient sculpture there.

The exhibition is called Jan Gossaert's Renaissance, and that title invites us to ponder two questions – what was the Renaissance, and what was it for him? Neither is easy to answer. The Renaissance began as a movement by Italian intellectuals to rediscover the true meaning and value of ancient Greek and Roman civilisation. But, as this show reveals, by the early 1500s the Renaissance was spreading far beyond Italy and changing as it travelled. It includes wonderful works by Albrecht Dürer and Jacopo de' Barbari as well as Gossaert, that reveal how the classical ideal mutated and interbred with more folkish ideas when it crossed the Alps. There is even a hair-raising print by Dürer that uses the new Renaissance convention of the nude to portray a coven of witches, weaving their enchantments while their master the devil grimaces at the door.

Gossaert fixed on the image of Adam and Eve as a way to explore nudity within the intensely Christian cultures of the north, where women still wore wimples and Martin Luther was wrestling with his conscience. Inspired partly by Dürer's astonishing drawings, prints and paintings of Adam and Eve – also on show here – he takes a sophisticated, relaxed pleasure in these Edenic bodies. Gossaert is an incredibly fleshy painter, a consummate sensualist whose greatest talent is to play with the possibilities of the nude form, make skin ripple and tauten. In one of his drawings, Eve offers Adam the apple not in a coy proposal, but in a passionate embrace that is clearly leading them into a sinful experience: the Fall as foreplay. Nor did he confine his eroticism to the Garden of Eden. In small paintings done for his employer, the erotically uninhibited Philip of Burgundy, he delights in the lewdness of pagan Greco-Roman myth. He paints Venus nude except for fine jewels and headgear, the ornaments heightening the profanity.

This show is a cabinet of curiosities. Gossaert is almost Warholian in his fascination with surface, a rich observer of the physical world who hesitates to go beyond. Even his portraits are sensual studies of faces rather than introspective studies of character. These portraits are fascinating in their concentration on the creamy skins, curling facial features and bright eyes of their subjects, as if he were studying them as physiognomic specimens. Even his religious paintings – above all his mighty picture of St Luke, patron saint of artists, and his sumptuous Adoration of the Magi – are opulent feasts of surface effects. His work holds in balance the tensions between visionary revelation and realism, design and colour, painting and sculpture, showing the ambiguities of his world, on the cusp of the middle ages and modernity. In Gossaert's Renaissance, the classical ideal is always playfully involved with a messy life. You feel he would have been good to talk to and meet, a good teacher, someone who enjoyed a glass and a joke – a true Renaissance man.

Laura Cumming writes;

Jan Gossaert is not a name on everyone's lips. It feels safe to say that he is no longer famous at all. Presumably the National Gallery aims to revive the Flemish painter's dormant reputation with this immense survey, organised jointly with the Metropolitan Museum in New York and accompanied by a catalogue raisonné so weighty one wouldn't invest in it lightly. But this is one of those occasions where scholarship doesn't have all the answers, notably to the simple question of why Gossaert's peculiar pictures should be admired in the first place.

For the claims made about him these days are vast: Gossaert (c.1478-1532) is startling, a pivotal old master, the man who changed the course of Flemish art. His portraits are favourably compared to Dürer, Memling and Holbein. He goes way beyond the tradition of Van Eyck. He is Rubens a century in advance.

The last holds true, in a sense. For if Gossaert is known for anything in particular, it is for being the first Flemish artist to visit Italy and bring the sultry south back to the north. He goes to Rome in 1508 and returns with visions of bare flesh, erotic vigour and Adam and Eve in the exact transition from innocently naked to suggestively nude. His figures are sturdy, intertwined, earthy.

They pleased his notoriously lusty patron, Philip of Burgundy, who commissioned many Gossaert girls for his walls. They scandalised the British, for example the diarist John Evelyn, who was shocked by the explicit belly buttons of Adam and Eve (surely the first man and woman came without them, begotten not made, from the mind of God). Certainly they broke the ice.

There is a tremendous drawing here of the first couple spaced out like drug addicts. Adam is slack-jawed, nearly drooling as he rests his head on Eve's breast, clinging to her like a drowning man. He is stubby, wasted, bent like a pretzel. She is lithe and upright, but entirely mesmerised by the apple. The fall of man is epitomised as eternal insatiable hunger.

This is Gossaert at his best, unbridled and free, working away in ink and white gouache on a sheet of gray paper, and there are other drawings here that reveal a mind alive to physical release as well as repression, to coyness, discomfort and many nuances of sex. These show Gossaert's workings very well.

Indeed as far as art history is concerned, this exhibition is exemplary. It has more than 80 works from all over the world, including the National Gallery's own large group. It puts them in context and alongside comparable works by other painters. The restoration, cleaning and firming up of attributions are plainly scrupulous. But compared to the drawings, the paintings are indifferent and unfulfilled. They leave me completely cold.

Take the portraits. It is as if the sitters were never in the room with Gossaert at all, these images are so devoid of personality. Or as if whatever interest these people once held has slowly evaporated during the lengthy business of describing eyebrows, hands or hats. The pictures have a concise, mechanical look, with a workmanlike attention to detail, that comes over well in reproduction but has no charisma whatsoever on the wall.

Gossaert goes in for architectural devices; the frame within a frame, the ledge and sill, the figure apparently leaning forward out of one into the other. The attempt at animation doesn't work. Neither does the effort to describe appearance or character. One merchant looks much like another, bar marginal adjustments of props or pose. All three children of Christian II are identically bug-eyed and sickly, like some unfortunate three-headed monster.

Perhaps the cleaning has been too brutal, for Gossaert seems to lack a sense of touch or relish. Look at the painting chosen to promote the show, Washington's Portrait of a Man (c.1530), and it is hard to differentiate the textures of the red sleeve from the red sealing wax, or the forehead from the fingernails, or the fur from the hair. This is arguably his finest portrait, yet Gossaert is no more or less attentive to the merchant's inner being than the paperwork festooning the walls.

The man is one more item to add to the inventory of objects; and in the gallery, likewise, the wall text lists them all over again in lieu of something, anything, to say.

Every Gossaert makes one long to be looking at some other northern painter – Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, Memling, Brueghel. It is hard to fix upon any particular painting to praise. His masterpiece, for many people, is the National Gallery's own The Adoration of the Kings (1510-15) with its mise-en-scène of angels, three-storey ruins and adoring sovereigns, partly famous for including what may be the first black figure in northern painting.

All you can see and more! The Adoration is dense with detail: a golden bowl full of gold coins and the reflections therein, the underside of baby Jesus's plump little foot, the checkerboard tiles, the green hills far away. It is positively Flemish in its fascination with the look of things.

But the meaning of the scene, its atmosphere of awe and tenderness, its juxtaposition of poverty, wealth and faith, its portents for the future, its religious significance – none of this is in the painting's content. What strikes is the placing of people and objects like elements in a child's wooden nativity set, the virtuosity of detail, the emphatic perspective now tellingly exposed as the receding lines of the underdrawing have become visible beneath the oil paint.

The National Gallery's recent policy of avoiding blockbusters in favour of shows that focus on aspects of its own collection is in many ways admirable. To summarise: work with what you've got. But what they've got here is not going to catch a light, no matter how superb the scholarship, when the art itself lacks fire. There hasn't been a Gossaert survey for almost 50 years, and now one understands why.

These articles and others regarding this exhibition and Jan Gossaert can be found on the below links:-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/feb/27/jan-gossaert-renaissance-review?intcmp=239

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/feb/22/jan-gossaert-renaissance-national-gallery?intcmp=239

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/mar/04/jan-gossaert-renaissance-review?intcmp=239

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/feb/22/jan-gossaert-national-gallery-renaissance?intcmp=239

Jan Gossaert's Renaissance Exhibition at the National Gallery, London

For the first time in over 40 years, the National Gallery are showing an exhibition dedicated to this Northern Renaissance Master's work, which aims to re-examine the artists accomplishments and showcase some new discoveries through the use of new technology.

The National Gallery's website elucidates:

Working for wealthy and extravagant members of the Burgundian court in the Low Countries in the first three decades of the 16th century, Gossaert was especially noted for his sensuous nudes, painted to evoke the sheen of marble, and his stunning illusionistic portraits in which he plays intriguing spatial games.

The first northern artist to draw directly from antiquity in Italy (during a visit to Rome in 1508–9), Gossaert was a peerless exponent of the illusionistic properties of oil paint as practised by his countrymen from Jan van Eyck onwards.
About the exhibition

The exhibition features over 80 works, including many of the artist’s most important paintings, including the ‘Virgin and Child’, 1527, Prado, Madrid, and ‘Hercules and Deianeira’, 1517, Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham. It also features drawings and contemporaneous sculptures of the Northern Renaissance.

The National Gallery has one of the largest and finest collections of Gossaert’s paintings in the world – a highlight being The Adoration of the Kings (1510–15). This exhibition allows them to be set in the context of the full range of the artist’s work, from the fruits of his early visit to Rome to the unusually erotic presentation of the nude in his Adam and Eve series.

The Exhibition is held in the Sainsbury Wing until 30th May 2011 and tickets can be obtained from the Gallery or online at http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/jan-gossaerts-renaissance/*/tab/1

Personality of the Month: Caravaggio's Dark Past comes to Light

The BBC have reported that the celebrated Caravaggio's life was not all light and luminosity, as it unveiled a rediscovered police record of the artist from the early 17thC, which is now on display, among others, in an Exhibition of Documents in the State Archives in Rome.

The exhibition; 'Caravaggio in Rome. A Life from Life' is described by the State Archives in Rome's website as consisting of 'Unpublished documents, paintings and evidence gathers so far never on display in the State.'

An artist known for his brilliant use of chiaroscuro, Caravaggio's signature paintings displayed his talent in using a dramatic depth of darkness pared with the sharply piercing luminosity of pure light. He seems however, to have known what lay in such darkness as we hear of tales of madness and murder from the documents on display.

The BBC reports;

Caravaggio's friendships, daily life and frequent brawls - including the one which brought him a death sentence from Pope Paul V - are described in handwritten police logs, legal and court parchments all bound together in heavy tomes - and carefully preserved in this unique repository of Rome's history during the Renaissance and after.

The picture the documents paint is that of an irascible man who went about town carrying personal weapons - a sword and dagger, and even a pistol - without a written permit, boasting that he enjoyed the protection of the ecclesiastical authorities who commissioned some of his most famous works.

Among other misdemeanors, the documents report of Caravaggio's skirmishes with the police, being sued by his land lady for hiding his paintings in her ceiling and having a penchant for carrying around personal weapons with him, which included a dagger, a sword (not unreasonable for the times) and even a pistol.

The main attraction to the documents on display however are the manuscripts describing Caravaggio's more serious crime, when in May 1606, he murdered Ranuccio Tommassoni. The eye witness accounts detail how the seemingly impetuous brawl was actually carefully planned between eight, now named participants, who arranged the meeting. Also it is clear that the brawl was not over a lovers quarrel but the more likely gambling debts of the impassioned Caravaggio;

Caravaggio and his three companions, one a Captain in the Papal army, met their rivals at a pallacorda court in the Campo Marzio area, where the artist lived. (Pallacorda was a game played with a ball with a string attached - an early form of tennis, which some older Romans still remember seeing played in the streets of the capital in the mid-20th Century.)

Some biographers have suggested that there may have been an argument over a woman, but the text of the court report suggests the quarrel broke out over a gambling debt. Caravaggio killed Ranuccio and fled the city.

As well as enlightening the reader on Caravaggio's murder charge, the documents also illuminate the circumstances behind his early death at Porto Ercole in 1610. At 38 years old, Caravaggio was returning to Rome on the understanding that his friends had managed to secure a pardon for him from Pope Paul V and was believed to have died alone on a beach escaping his perusing creditors and the police. These manuscripts however, now seem to shed new light on Caravaggio's death.

After careful scrutiny the documents reveal that Caravaggio actually died in a hospital bed;

Only 38 years old, he was on his way back to the city from the south in the belief that his powerful friends had secured a pardon for his offences.

The artists life seem to have been well documented, not only by fellow artists and patrons alike, but by the Police also. A statement written by a waiter present at one scene of Caravaggio's temper is recorded in Police records;

Statement to police by Pietro Antonio de Fosaccia, waiter, 26 April 1604:

About 17 o'clock [lunchtime] the accused, together with two other people, was eating in the Moor's restaurant at La Maddalena, where I work as a waiter. I brought them eight cooked artichokes, four cooked in butter and four fried in oil. The accused asked me which were cooked in butter and which fried in oil, and I told him to smell them, which would easily enable him to tell the difference.

He got angry and without saying anything more, grabbed an earthenware dish and hit me on the cheek at the level of my moustache, injuring me slightly... and then he got up and grabbed his friend's sword which was lying on the table, intending perhaps to strike me with it, but I got up and came here to the police station to make a formal complaint...

The Police documents themselves of their dealings with Caravaggio are numerous;

Police Dossier - Artist Behaving Badly

• 4 May 1598: Arrested at 2- 3am near Piazza Navona, for carrying a sword without a permit
• 19 November 1600: Sued for beating a man with a stick and tearing his cape with a sword at 3am on Via della Scrofa
• 2 October 1601: A man accuses Caravaggio and friends of insulting him and attacking him with a sword near the Piazza Campo Marzio
• 24 April 1604: Waiter complains of assault after serving artichokes at an inn on the Via Maddalena
• 19 October 1604: Arrested for throwing stones at policemen near Via dei Greci and Via del Babuino
• 28 May 1605: Arrested for carrying a sword and dagger without a permit on Via del Corso
• 29 July 1605: Vatican notary accuses Caravaggio of striking him from behind with a weapon
• 28 May 1606: Caravaggio kills a man during a pitched battle in the Campo Marzio area

For more information on the tempestuous dark side to the master of light, please see the links below!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12497978

http://www.archiviodistatoroma.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/22/archivio-eventi/69/mostra-su-caravaggio-a-roma-una-vita-dal-vero-documenti-inediti-dipinti-e-testimonianze-sinora-mai-raccolte-in-mostra-allarchivio-di-stato

Missing Paintings from Glasgow's Kelvingrove are Returned

Federico Barocci, 1535-1612, a mannerist painter in Urbino, Italy during the Renaissance, is at the centre of an investigation of art works that were stolen during the 1990's. Three paintings, including a Barocci belonging to the Kelvingrove Art Museum have now been returned to the Glasgow Museums after being missing for nearly ten years.

Officers reopened the investigation into the missing paintings when a senior curator from Kelvingrove noticed 'Wooded Landscape With Figures' by the French artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, one of the stolen artworks, in an auction catalogue from auctioneers Lyon and Turnbull.

It seems that after a thorough investigation, Strathclyde Police located the source of the Corot painting and later located the Barocci at the source's home.

The paintings, which had all disappeared in the 90's, were part of a larger, more worrying concern. The Kelvingrove, among other institutions under the Glasgow City Council remit, were found to have unsatisfactory arrangements for recording artefacts and their locations , according to an audit carried out as part of the inquiry. Furthermore, according to the Scottish Herald; it appears that Glasgow City Council had received an anonymous letter, which;

spoke of paintings “being taken by at least one member of staff and sold on the black market” in an operation that has been going on for “at least the past six years”

The Herald reports further;

A Lothian and Borders Police source confirmed yesterday that two paintings had been uncovered but that Strathclyde Police had confirmed it formed part of a “bigger investigation and that there may potentially be more pieces of art that can be uncovered as a result of the inquiries”.

A spokesman for Glasgow Life, the arm’s length agency running civic museums, libraries and leisure centres, said: “We’re very grateful for the work of the police in bringing these paintings home to Glasgow. However, every praise should be reserved for our senior curator whose keen eye illuminated the fact that the stolen Corot was up for auction. Without his wealth of knowledge and expertise, the works may still have been hanging on elsewhere.

“We will continue to work with UK police forces to ensure any stolen item is returned to Glasgow and we are grateful to the galleries who have readily assisted in this matter.”

Details of the alleged thefts from Glasgow Museums were an embarrassment to senior management, which had been in dispute with unions over plans to cut nearly 60 jobs, at the time.

The anonymous letter which triggered the inquiry said: “The ability for staff members not being detected lies in the fact there is apparently no proper documentation of what artefacts are in store and the availability of unlimited access by staff members to storerooms.

“I have heard of at least 10 paintings worth hundreds of thousands of pounds being taken over the past few years. My source of information is from one employee of the council. He has foolishly bragged about his involvement in the pilfering.

“The auditors had said the arrangements for recording artefacts and their locations was unsatisfactory. The arrangement for access to stores are also unsatisfactory and of concern. It is the auditors’ view that the present arrangements leave the collection vulnerable to theft.

“The inquiries confirm that a number of items cannot be accounted for and the full extent of the problem is not known.”

Strathclyde Police said: “We can confirm we are currently investigating and inquiries are ongoing into this matter.”

The three paintings; the afore mentioned landscape by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, another by Scottish colourist Samuel Peploe and the work by Italian Renaissance artist Federico Barocci, said to be worth around £200,000.00 collectively, are now 'safely' back in the hands of Glasgow City Council.

For further information please see:-
http://www.liverpoolwired.co.uk/news.php/123897-Three-stolen-Glasgow-paintings-have-been-recovered

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/exclusive-police-recover-stolen-art-1.1080803

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/hundreds-of-items-lost-from-glasgow-museums-1.1083036

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/the-84-artworks-missing-from-city-s-galleries-1.1081024

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-12237240

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jan/20/scottish-police-recover-stolen-paintings?INTCMP=SRCH

National Gallery Exhibition - Italian Altarpieces before 1500

From 6th July to 2nd October 2011 the National Gallery, London will be showing a small exhibition, in its Sainsbury Wing, entitled; Devotion by Design: Italian Altarpieces before 1500.

This free exhibition will explore the Altarpiece in context, using items from the Gallery's own collection, to show the developments of form and style from 1250-1500.

The National gallery website describes the exhibition;

As part of a programme of summer shows focusing on the National Gallery’s collection, ‘Devotion by Design’ explores the function, the original location, and the development of altarpieces in Italy during the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance.
Altarpieces in context

These objects furnished altars in churches and were not originally intended to hang in a gallery as we see them today. Instead, they were created for a specific sacred context, forming the focus of devotion for worshippers.

Using the Gallery’s own collection, this exhibition investigates the development of altarpieces, looking at changes in form, style and type. It examines not only the evolution of their physical structure but also their relationship to their frames and to the monumental architecture that surrounded them.
The parts of an altarpiece

A small section of ‘Devotion by Design’ will be dedicated to altarpiece fragments, explaining the role different elements of altarpieces played in the overall ensemble. The exhibition examines the reasons why altarpieces came to be dismembered (often with the dissolution of religious institutions in the 18th and 19th centuries) and the methods that art historians now use to reassemble them.

‘Devotion by Design’ showcases altarpieces by well-known artists such as Piero della Francesca, but includes many which are less familiar. It revisits works in the National Gallery Collection in a fresh and innovative light, drawing on the wealth of scholarship undertaken in this field in recent years.

The Altarpiece itself has had a shifting symbolism in the eyes of the art historians, considered to be works of art in their own right and products of artistic genius, or devotional pieces of work intended for one purpose only.

The Altarpiece in the Renaissance - by Peter Humfrey, Italian altarpieces 1250-1550: Function and Design - by Eve Borsook, Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi & The altarpiece in Renaissance Italy - by Jacob Burckhardt are some notable literary works on the Altarpiece, its context and artistic worth, which are good books to look over before you attend the exhibition.

The National Gallery will also produce an Exhibition Catalogue, which is available for pre-order through amazon.co.uk;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Devotion-Design-Italian-Altarpieces-National/dp/1857095251/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295332315&sr=1-3

See also:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Mekjfh8R3R8C&pg=PA175&dq=The+Altarpiece+in+the+Renaissance&hl=en&ei=bjM1TaDGDsfl4gb4_oXOCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=The%20Altarpiece%20in%20the%20Renaissance&f=false

http://nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/devotion-by-design