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Showing posts with the label Giovanni Bellini

Opening and Closing in August

August is always one of the quietest months for new exhibitions, and this year is no different, but we do have one big event to alert you to, as well as two splendid shows that only have weeks to run.  The one major opening is  Gwen John: Strange Beauties  at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. Running from August 1 to January 4, this is a comprehensive retrospective of the work of the woman perhaps now seen as Wales's most significant artist, born 150 years ago this year. Maybe a little too comprehensive, according to some of the reviews of the show when it was on at the National Museum in Cardiff. The exhibition goes on to the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, in February and then at the end of July next year to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC. We saw a rather smaller Gwen John exhibition in Chichester in 2023.  Last chance to see.... Ending on August 23 is the exhibition at the Lakenhal in Leiden ...
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On the Road with Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer: one of the great names of Renaissance art. His printmaking secured the man from Nuremberg lasting fame across Europe in his own lifetime, with his AD monogram becoming a pioneering symbol for quality and authenticity. In his native Germany, where Dürer is one of the key figures in the country's cultural history, we've seen some wonderful and exhaustive -- if exhausting -- exhibitions of his work, particularly at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg itself.  Dürer's Journey's: Travels of a Renaissance Artist  at the National Gallery in London doesn't approach those heights; for one thing, there aren't really that many of Dürer's greatest hits -- you won't be seeing his Hare , or his Rhinoceros -- and while there are some fascinating woodcuts and engravings by the German, we got the impression that his paintings here were a little bit overshadowed by the work of other artists on show -- Giovanni Bellini and Quinten Massys, to name...
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Mantegna and Bellini: Brothers-in-Law, Rivals in Art

It's a great story. Two brothers-in-law, with two competing visions of art: one from Venice's greatest family of painters, the other the son of a carpenter. In their early years they found inspiration in each other's work; while Andrea Mantegna's is full of invention, theatre and painterly tricks, Giovanni Bellini's is less intricate but more emotionally charged. For decades afterwards, they worked apart, in different cities; then Giovanni was called on to complete Andrea's final commission, one he was unable to finish before he died. As you make your way through Mantegna and Bellini at London's National Gallery, you find yourself weighing up the respective merits of these early Renaissance painters. Mantegna perhaps shades it in the first few rooms, but Bellini puts in a strong finish. This is, it has to be said, quite an intense exhibition, not one in which you can drift through easy-on-the-eye landscapes, wonder at the realism of still lives or admir...
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Now or Never: Opening in October

October sees the start of a series of exhibitions that promise to be exceptional, bringing together works of art that may never again be viewable in the same place at the same time. Museums and galleries across Europe aren't stinting on the superlatives. Two of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance come together at London's National Gallery for a show its director describes as "unprecedented and probably unrepeatable". Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini were brothers-in-law, and Mantegna's compositional innovations and Bellini's natural landscapes play a pivotal role in art history. With pictures loaned from around Europe and beyond, it runs from October 1 to January 27. Mantegna inspired Edward  Burne-Jones ,   and Tate Britain is giving   the late Pre-Raphaelite  his first major retrospective in London for more than 40 years. Over 150 works aim to show how Burne-Jones developed into one of the leading European, and not just British, artists...
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