Drawings

It's been a fairly uneventful week. I've mainly been hand-quilting my rainbow quilt, which is to cover a single bed and is thus, by my standards, quite large - certainly the largest I've done. I'm having fun, though, just quilting it to please myself, not to any particular pattern. 

But we did go to an exhibition of Renaissance drawings at the King's Gallery - everything here is from the royal collections. (Why does one family have so much? Hmm.) First, we had coffee in the cafe, which has nice views out on to the hill behind. Sustenance and then art. 

The drawings were amazing, not least because they were on paper and had survived 500 years. (I don't imagine that anything I do will survive me by 50 years, let alone 500.) Mainly they were sketches for later paintings, some of which are now lost (or, who knows? maybe on someone's wall somewhere). The one below is by Battista Franco. He lived from 1510-1561; not all that long. This is the flagellation of Christ, so not exactly cheery. But doesn't it have movement? And aren't the expressions of the two chaps on the right interesting? One just dogged, the other somewhat horrified, as one might well be if Jesus was looking so intently into one's face. 

This is St Jerome by Bartolomeo Passarotti, who lived quite a bit longer: 1529-1592. 

And this head of a man is by the Circle of Cristoforo Canozzi da Lendinara, c 1427- after 1477. So possibly not even by Cristoforo himself. It's thought that it was a design for intarsia, in which pieces of differently toned wood are inlaid - hence the sort of contour lines. 

Now, this is a sad one. Parmigianino (1503-1540) was commissioned to decorate the vault of Santa Maria della Steccata, and this is his sketch for the middle of it. It's the coronation of the Virgin. But he was jailed for a while for his lack of progress, and then he died - at 37. Oh dear. 

All these chaps were so much cleverer than I am and I'd never heard of any of them. I'm glad that their work is still around, though. So thanks, King Charles, I suppose, for letting us see them.