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Rembrandt & van Hoogstraten: The Art of Illusion

It takes a split second these days to create an image, and how many millions are recorded daily on mobile phones, possibly never to be looked at again? You can see it all happening in the palatial surroundings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, definitely one of those tick-off destinations on many travellers' bucket lists, where those in search of instant pictorial satisfaction throng the imposing statue-lined staircase for a selfie or pout for a photo in the café under the spectacular cupola. But we're not in Vienna for a quick fix, we're at the KHM to admire something more enduring in the shape of art produced almost 500 years ago by Rembrandt and his pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten that was intended to mislead your eyes into seeing the real in the unreal. Artistic deception is the story at the centre of  Rembrandt--Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion , one of the most engrossing and best-staged exhibitions we've seen this year. And, somewhat surprisingly, a show wi...
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The Renaissance Nude -- It's Not the Full Monty

Renaissance nudes.... let's see what springs to mind.

Well, there's Titian's Venus of Urbino, obviously, or maybe the Sleeping Venus started by Giorgione and finished by Titian. How about Botticelli's Birth of Venus, or Velázquez's Rokeby Venus, or one of those many Cranachs with Venus and Cupid? And that's just the one Roman goddess, off the top of our heads.

So, for an exhibition on the Renaissance Nude, at London's Royal Academy, organised in conjunction with the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, you might be expecting a bit of a blockbuster. But this show is a lot more low-key. There are some fine works of art, to be sure, with Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo and Leonardo represented, but it just all feels a wee bit flat.

You see, as we left, we were thinking about what pictures might have given a bit of oomph to this exhibition, and one of the first we came up with was Jean Fouquet's Virgin and Child from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. A pale Virgin Mary, apparently modelled by Agnes Sorel, the mistress of King Charles VII of France, stands with one breast exposed, surrounded by astounding red and blue angels. Combining the religious with the aesthetic and the erotic, it's the sort of image that once seen is not easily forgotten. In short, the perfect Renaissance nude, or semi-nude. Maybe we should play this Fantasy Art Exhibition game a bit more often, because it turns out that the Virgin and Child was indeed the star attraction of the Getty version of this show during the winter.

Among other paintings that failed to make it from LA to the RA, we find from the Getty's checklist, are Antonello da Messina's St Sebastian from Dresden and Giorgione's Laura from Vienna, to name but two. What's going on here? Big pictures from big European galleries not being loaned to the Royal Academy?

These missing works do go some way to explaining why we felt a little bit short-changed by this show, despite its near-universal good reviews. 

So, now that we've told you what you're not getting, what can you see at the Royal Academy? One of the themes of this show is how religion and art were interlinked during the Renaissance, with the depiction of some episodes from both the Old Testament -- think Adam and Eve -- and the New giving artists the opportunity to depict nudes, making Christian subject matter more realistic.

Well, at least in theory. Because here are saints who remain beautiful despite the ordeals they are going through. Take Sebastian, according to tradition bound to a stake and shot through with arrows for his faith. One of the first paintings we encounter is of him by Cima da Conegliano; it's a male-model body and pose, and there's just the one arrow in his thigh. If he's idealised, he's nothing compared with this later version by Agnolo Bronzino, with the saint looking positively seductive in an off-the-shoulder red number.
There was of course even more leeway for the erotic in the depiction of classical gods and heroes, with their tales of lust and debauchery. Perhaps the outstanding picture here is Titian's Venus Rising from the Sea, with the goddess softly captured in a naturalistic pose, wringing out her wet hair and glancing over her shoulder.
There are other paintings, though, that left us cold: Dosso Dossi's Myth of Pan, over from the Getty, hardly seems like one of the great works of the Renaissance, with its unconvincing figures and cluttered composition. That's one of two large canvases by Dossi, and there's quite a lot, too, of Jan Gossaert's rather oddly proportioned, contorted nudes.

Some of the best bits of this show are not the paintings, but the prints and drawings. In Albrecht Dürer's Bath House, lots of steamy looks are being exchanged among the muscly male bathers. One of them leans on a post behind a suggestively placed tap. Where Dürer is all angular realism, Raphael's Three Graces are full of the curves of beauty, perhaps the most sinuously seductive image in this entire exhibition.
And among the most vivid representations of the human body in the Renaissance were those by Leonardo da Vinci, who dissected corpses as part of his researches into anatomy. This sheet explores the shoulder and neck muscles, annotated with Leonardo's notes in mirror script.
We go to exhibitions for a number of reasons. Sometimes we see great masterpieces from far-flung museums (how astounding it was to see American Gothic in the same rooms at the RA a couple of years ago). Sometimes we learn things, get a new take on the familiar (as in the Hammershøi show now on in Paris) or meet an artist completely unknown to us (the Harold Gilman exhibition in Chichester, for example). And sometimes we are just enthralled and entertained. Unfortunately, the naked truth is that the Renaissance Nude didn't really do any of that for us. Perhaps we should have got the Stephen Fry-voiced audioguide to bring to life what we found rather a lacklustre and pedestrian affair. 

Practicalities

Renaissance Nude runs until June 2 at the Royal Academy on Piccadilly in central London. It's open daily from 1000 to 1800, with lates on Fridays until 2200. Full-price tickets are £16, or £14 without a Gift Aid donation. Online booking is available here. The RA is a few minutes' walk from Green Park and Piccadilly Circus Tube stations.

Images

Agnolo Bronzino, Saint Sebastian, c. 1533, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Titian, Venus Rising from the Sea (Venus Anadyomene), c. 1520, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
Raphael, The Three Graces, c. 1517-18, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019
Leonardo da Vinci, The Anatomy of the Shoulder and Neck, c. 1510-11, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019


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