'Troy' at the British Museum

The 'Troy' exhibition at the British Museum is closing soon so I scooted along to catch it while I still can. I've been fascinated by Troy since I was young and read Homer's 'The Iliad' in my teenage years (in translation, obviously). It's strange how that story has wound its way into our culture through art, poetry, storytelling, films and virtually every medium you can think of. A universal tale if ever there was one.

There are so many different aspects to the tale of Troy, so many different stories that there's something in there for everyone. There are love stories, tales of war and mighty warriors, jealousy, greed, power struggles, domesticity, magic and the gods, so many different angles to it that can't possibly be captured in a single exhibition. This exhibition tries to be as broad as possible and, largely succeeds.

There are three parts to the exhibition. It starts with ancient views on the Troy story as illustrated in pottery, carvings and paintings, followed by a section on the archaeology of the site in modern Turkey, and finally a view of how the story has influenced more modern culture in the last thousand years or so through books, paintings and sculptures, and, of course, films.

There were some quite astonishing paintings from Pompeii on display that re-told the tales of the old story and showed how the Romans relished the tales. The quality of the paintings is amazing and the sad thing is that we'll never know who painted them two millennia ago. I didn't notice any information about the paintings in the signage - are they frescoes or painted on dried plaster? What sort of pigments were used to create those colours?

While many of the images dealt with the big parts of the story, like the judgement of Paris or the entry of the horse into Troy, some of them picked up on the smaller aspects, like the image of Ajax and Achilles chatting over a campfire on the side of a storage jar. In a way, it's these scenes that are more interesting since they're unusual but remind us that not everything in grand tales is grand or earth-shattering, that there's a lot of waiting around. There are quiet moments amongst all the noise and rush of war and great events.

After considering how the tales of Troy were dealt with in antiquity there was a section that looked at the archeology and the fact behind the legends. There is a lot of evidence for an ancient settlement on the site thought to be Troy - quite a few settlements over the millennia - but is there evidence for a war, mass migration, Greek invasion? This section had a range of artefacts from the different cities or settlements on the site of Troy, mostly small objects that were difficult to get close to given how crowded the exhibition was.

The next section looked at the influence on art and culture of the Troy stories and legends over the last thousand years, with examples of illuminated manuscripts re-telling the story, paintings. sculptures, films and videos.

One of the earliest examples were two gorgeous panel paintings by Biaggio d'Antonio from around 1490, a Florentine artist I've not heard of before but the colours shout out Quattrocento. They're on loan from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge so I'll have to take a trip to Cambridge to see what other treasures it might have. These panels show the 'Death of Hector' and 'The Wooden Horse' so someone had obviously read Homer (or possibly, Virgil) back then to get all the details.

There's a great statue of 'The Wounded Achilles' by Filippo Albacini from 1825 on loan from Chatsworth, which is the poster boy for the exhibition.

Further along is a lovely painting by Lucas Cranach of the 'Judgement of Paris' from around 1530 on loan from the Royal Collection. We see Paris in contemporary armour as a knight as he decides which goddess is the most beautiful and it's interesting that Cranach has chosen Aphrodite as the goddess to look out at the viewer - it could have been any of them really.

There are more modern pieces of art to illustrate the continuing fascination with Troy in all it's aspects. We see William Blake's version of the 'Judgement of Paris' and George Romney's painting 'Lady Hamilton as Clytemnestra' amongst a range of Victorian paintings.

The final exhibit was a bit of a surprise, a large light installation based on light readings at the site of Troy by Spencer Finch, 'The Shield of Achilles'. I loved it!

The exhibition is only on for another week or so but, if you're patient enough to survive the inevitable crowds, it's well worth seeing.