Our second art museum on this lovely trip was The National Gallery, which has a decidedly less…eclectic collection of art than the Tate Modern. We were also supposed to visit the National Portrait Gallery that day, but they will be closed until 2023, so unfortunately, I will have to catch it on another trip.
Luckily, the National Gallery had more than enough to keep me occupied! There was so much to see that I would need a full day (not to mention stronger feet) to view it all. I am sure I missed some really impressive pieces, but I still viewed and photographed plenty of excellent pieces of art, ranging from the 1200s to the 1500s.
As expected of European pieces of art prior to and leading up to the Renaissance period, there was no shortage of Christian iconography. A great majority of pieces I viewed contained Jesus, the Virgin Mary, one or numerous saints, or members of religious orders; that is if all four of those were not present in the same painting. Several were part of elaborate altar displays that simultaneously glorified the stories and figures of the Bible, allowed illiterate members of congregations to intake those same stories and figures while attending service, and demonstrated the wealth and power of the Church.
As logic would dictate, there were less pieces available from the earlier periods and more available from the later periods. And as the age of the paintings got less and less, the level of detail proportionally increased. The difference in level of realism between the 1200s and the 1500s was startling, though that may have struck me as such due to how close these pieces were to each other spatially, only being separated by a small number of rooms. Some of that increase in realism may be due to the transition from egg tempura paints to oil paints, or the medium changing from wood to canvas.
Earlier on in my tour, there were four rooms covering roughly the same period (the early-mid 1400s through the early 1500s) that each contained works from different Italian city-states. Specifically, they were works made in the traditions of Siena, Florence, Padua, and Venice. Having these rooms immediately next to one another allowed for easier comparison of the artistic styles native to, or at least preferred in, each locale. The first city-state presented, and the one that loses most by comparison with the others, is Siena. The creation date of the works compiled from Siena range from around 1300 to around 1450, which gives it minimal overlap with the collections from other city-states, whose ranges into the later half of the Fifteenth Century and the start of the Sixteenth Century show more innovations in realism. From what range the collection does have, I managed to make some insights (though I am not certain of the factuality of them). First, the frequent use of gold-colored paint suggests that the Sienese held great value in the subjects of their paintings and wanted others to hold those same subjects with that same value as well. Second, people and the actions in which they are portrayed hold more significance than where those people and actions are portrayed, given the rare use of backgrounds and, even in the cases of backgrounds being utilized, the human subjects being of a larger scale than the settings they occupy.
The second city state, Florence, had a greater amount of private life and historical/mythological content depicted in art, but the majority was still Biblical in nature. The human figures have slightly more definition and pronounced features than those in Sienese works, but a sense of the figures being like stock images with identifying marks or features added on top still remains. And while the focus is still largely on the human subjects in the paintings, more respect is given to the detailing of backgrounds, and a sense of larger scale is allowed to exist.
The third room in the sequence, displaying works made by artists who studied in Padua, was the first to really impress me. There was a very sudden jump in the level of detail in the human features and settings; it seemed impossible that these paintings were only made about 20-30 years after those in Florence! Things like the wrinkles on an older man’s face, or the Adam’s apple of St. John, or the tendons in the hand of St. Catherine were present in a way previously unseen. But easily the most impressive, in my mind, was one spot on the leg of St. Sebastian in Carlo Crivelli’s The Virgin and Child with Saints Francis and Sebastian, 1491. The saint is represented in the manner in which he was killed: pierced with many arrows. In his right leg, the viewer can see an arrow entering and exiting his flesh, and, amazingly, the shape of the arrow’s shaft is visible under the skin!! Such an astounding feat of biological realism would be impressive among artists with today’s references, but to create it at the turn of the Sixteenth Century is mind-boggling!
The fourth and final room in the sequence consisted of pieces from Venice, ranging from around 1460 to around 1510. The level of detail in these pieces is yet another step up from the Paduan artworks, with features like the gleam in people’s eyes being worked into portraits. In addition, a lot more effort is put into the background environments of pieces that have them, with many settings having a larger scale in comparison to the human characters occupying them.
The National Gallery held plenty of other pieces that caught my interest, like this painting of St. Michael depicting him with rainbow wings, and I certainly enjoyed my time there! But it was not the only event scheduled for the day.
After a few hours of respite, I joined the group in the lobby for our journey to Southwark Playhouse and its musical, Lift. Shawn spoke very highly of this company’s work prior to our departure from the U.S., so I had fairly high expectations. After having some very nice conversation with Cath and Maggie, we filed into the small, black-box style space and the production began.
Altogether, I would say the musical was pretty good. The vocals were excellent, with harmonies and different melodies blending together with high levels of skill. The instrumentals, both those provided by one of the actors onstage and the pit member (members?) were also well executed. The dialogue allowed for plenty of funny moments, but a healthy does of heavy, real moments too. There were only a few aspects of the show I found lacking. The first was in the pronunciation of the actors while they were singing. The musical is set in London, so a range of English accents makes perfect sense character-wise, but it meant that oftentimes consonants would be dropped off of words and understanding what was being sung was difficult. The other aspect of the show that left something to be desired was in the pacing of the story. This story consists of several different storylines that interconnect with each other at various points. Different characters share the same name, different characters are played by the same actor depending on the scene, and altogether it makes for a jumbled, confusing mess until the audience gets used to it; in my experience, that took about half of the show’s runtime.
All in all, I’d say that today was a day of exploration; of finding new things, or things that express familiar ideas in new ways. Given my intended career field, where stories are constantly being adapted and reimagined, days like these are excellent food for the mind!
Theatre in London U of A 
Thank you!
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