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30.10.2018
Milan
Featuring a spookily coincidental focus on Mantegna and
Bellini. Also guidebooks, a fruity old novel, sadness, and a
rather fine film.
18.10.2018
I had my first visit
to the
Mantegna and Bellini exhibition
at the National Gallery this morning, and it's a firm
recommendation: intelligent arrangement, impressive and
well-chosen loans, good audioguide and not too crowded.
Highlights include the Crucifixion panel from the San
Zeno altarpiece in Verona, which has still not been returned
after Napoleon swiped it, which means it's much easier to see
up close and appreciate than the altarpiece is itself. And
Mantegna sure has a way with classical architecture, and
rabbits. I came away more of a Mantegna fan than before, but
Bellini is still my man. How they interacted is the
fascination of the show, which moves to Berlin next spring, if
that helps.
19.9.2018
A bit of a Bellini
book bonanza at the moment. Lives of Giovanni Bellini
is a palm-size but comprehensive and plushly-illustrated
compilation of roughly contemporary writing about Bellini by
Vasari, Ridolfi and Boschini, with the letters between him and
Isabella d'Este as a bonus. It's edited and introduced by the
Getty's Davide Gasparotto and looks like an ideal stocking-filler for
the Bellini fans in you life. Giovanni Bellini: The Art of
Contemplation by Johannes Grave is a much more major
career survey. I'll be reviewing both soon. And then there's
the Mantegna and Bellini exhibition in London in prospect, in
connection with which I'm going to a one-day talk and a
two-afternoon course. I strongly doubt that you can have too
much Giov Bellini, but I think that I'm going to find out, one
way or the other.
16.9.2018
Florence and Arezzo
11.8.2018
Searching
for something fresh in the fiction line to read on my upcoming
trip to Florence (and Arezzo) I'm not getting any anticipatory
frissons, I have to admit. There's a new
Philip Kazan, called
The Phoenix of Florence - we like him but it's not
published until next February. Fiction set in Florence
featuring Leonardo is far from rare, as are novels where
conspiracies are uncovered, crimes committed and members of
the Medici family murdered. Also Florence and feminism and
female artists is a definite thing. So a series that mixes up
all of this stuff, called the Da Vinci's Disciples series,
should be no surprise. It features a team of female painters
secretly trained by Leonardo and the books look to be dark and
tasty, but it takes a lot to make me forgive the making of the
heinous Dan Brown mistake of using Da Vinci as a surname, as
regular readers will know. There is a new
Marco Vichi out while I'm in
Florence, but I haven't read his previous one yet. So maybe I
will.
1.7.2018
On a quiet
Sunday afternoon, with the temperature nudging 30˚ in London,
nothing warms the cockles of a webmaster quite like the discovery
that his site has been cited and linked to
on the Tate Gallery's website,
and on
another page
on the same site
The Churches of Venice is cited to
contradict the previous misidentification of a doorway!
more news here |
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October 2018
Milan
Trips
John Ruskin
Mornings in Florence
September 2018
Lives of Giovanni Bellini
Venice
Florence and Arezzo
Trips
August 2018
Marco Vichi Death in
the Tuscan Hills
Florence
June & July 2018
Leeds and
York
Trips
Nancy
Trips
Bologna
Trips
April &
May 2018
Claudia
Caramanna et al
Paintings
from Murano by
Paolo Veronese Venice
Tristan Palmgren
Quietus
Florence
March
2018
Donna Leon
The Temptation of
Forgiveness Venice
Philip Gwynne Jones
Vengeance in Venice
Roberto Tiraboschi
The Eye Stone Venice
Siena
Trips
February
2018
Gregory Dowling
The Four Horsemen Venice
Imogen Hermes Gowar The Mermaid and Mrs
Hancock
London
Lincoln
Short trips
November
&
December
2017
Vienna
Trips
Norwich
Short trips
Glenn Haybittle
The Way Back to Florence
Giovanni Boccaccio
The
Decameron
Florence
September
& October
2017
Magdalen
Nabb
Death
of a Dutchman
Florence
Padua & Verona
Trips
David Adams Cleveland
Time's Betrayal Venice |
