Favourite Paintings: 'The Madonna of the Swallow' by Carlo Crivelli

Another favourite painting is 'Madonna of the Swallow' by Carlo Crivelli, a Venetian painter from the late 15th Century. He has quite a distinctive style and most of his works are full of lots of detail, often with swags of flowers or fruit hanging in strange places in the painting. One reason I like it is that, as well as being a great painting, it's in its original frame, so this is what Italian altarpieces looked like around 1490.

We have the Virgin and Child flanked by saints Jerome and Sebastian, both of whom are looking a bit peeved. Jerome has his symbols of the bishop's hat, his books and the lion while Sebastian is clothed for once and holds an arrow. The Virgin is crowned and enthroned and above her is a swallow on the lintel, hence the name of the altarpiece. The predella (the paintings underneath the main painting) shows St Catherine of Alexandria, Jerome in the wilderness, the nativity, Sebastian's martyrdom and St George with the dragon. There's probably a very good reason why these five scenes make up the predella but I don't know why.   

Whenever I see this painting I try to find another detail I haven't noticed before, puzzle about St Jerome seems so cross and insistence and why Sebastian seems to be practicing his dance steps in front of his Lord while reminding him with the arrow that he died in his name. The bowls of flowers at the top of the painting intrigue me - who waters them?

If you're lucky enough to be able to get to the National Gallery in London then give yourself a few minutes to look at this painting properly and see what you can find in it.

'Hamlet' Actors

For no good reason I wondered how many times I've seen Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' on stage recently. It's one of his greats and is one of my favourites. I used to be able to quote huge chunks of it but not these days. In the last 11 years I've seen six different productions. It seems like once an actor reaches a certain age and wants to prove their theatrical credentials they want to play or get offered the part of the Dane.

2009   Jude Law (Wyndham's)

2010   Rory Kinnear (National Theatre)

2011   Michael Sheen (Young Vic)

2015   Benedict Cumberbatch (Barbican)

2017   Andrew Scott (Almeida)

2018   Michelle Terry (The Globe)

I've yet to see a truly great production of 'Hamlet' and all of these productions have something about them that disappointed. It's not the acting, more the production itself, the director's vision of the play, usually wanting to do something 'different' with it, or the sets and staging of the piece.  Jude Law's version was a bit unmemorable (other than lots of running) and the worst from my point of view was Michael Sheen's with it's awful setting in a mental hospital and Ophelia wandering around dropping coloured tablets rather than flowers. It was all so unnecessary and pointless.

Benedict Cumberbatch's version was simply a star vehicle and I really disliked the rubble-strewn second half (I kept worrying someone would turn an ankle walking on it all). Andrew Scott's version was interesting and had a novel take on using technology but what let it down was a new final scene set in the afterlife. No! If the play needed an afterlife scene then I'm sure Shakespeare would've written it. 'Hamlet' ends with Fortinbras taking the crown of leaderless Denmark.

I think my favourites are Rory Kinnear and Michelle Terry, largely because they know how to speak Shakespeare's verse, it's in their bones and they speak so naturally. The productions weren't great but the actors were. Michelle Terry made me want to read the play again and savour some of those great speeches.

The first production of 'Hamlet' I ever saw was with Derek Jacobi playing the title role in 1978, fresh from his huge success with 'I Clavdivs'. He's also part of a theatrical tradition of great Hamlet's passing on a copy of the play from one to another, started when Michael Redgrave gave the small book to Peter O'Toole. The book went to Derek Jacobi and he passed it to Kenneth Branagh who still has it. I wonder who he'll eventually give it to. I saw the book in an exhibition at the British Library a few years ago.

That's six productions in only 11 years so that mean we're overdue another production. I wonder who will play Hamlet next?

'Sin' at the National Gallery

The National Gallery has just opened a new exhibition titled 'Sin', an exploration of depicting the concept of sin in art. It's a nice provocative title but I'm not sure it really lives up to the name. It's in the ground floor galleries and is, essentially, a one-room exhibition of about 14 works. The first painting you see as you walk in is Bronzino's 'Allegory with Venus and Cupid' which could mean virtually anything. Beside it on the wall is Tracey Emin's 'It Was Only A Kiss' in neon lighting. 

To mount an exhibition about 'sin' in only 14 works is quite a challenge. The poster girl for the exhibition is Valesquez's 'Immaculate Conception' and the first painting on the walls is Jan Breughel's 'The Garden of Eden', a delightful little painting full of animals he probably hadn't seen when he painted it. We then move on to Cranach's 'Adam and Eve' and the first sin of eating the fruit of knowledge from the forbidden tree.

A work I hadn't seen before was 'The Scapegoat' by William Holman Hunt on loan from Manchester Art Gallery, a rather strange small painting with a woolly goat looking out of the picture in an odd landscape with a moon and  rainbow in the background. The sign explains that the goat is a symbol of sin and it carries away the sins of the people when it's set free to wander away. I can't help but feel that if you've got to explain something then maybe it's not the best exhibit to use. 

The final work is a small statue of a young man lifting up his tee shirt to look at a wound in his side simply called 'Youth' by Ron Mueck. The sign says, 'The work proposes a path of redemption that questions, disrupts and dismantles stereotypes and prejudices....'. That's a roundabout way of saying the young man in the statue is black. Has he been stabbed or is he the risen Christ for a new age? There are many paintings of Christ showing his wound, often to doubting Thomas, and this statue repeats that image but with the lad in tee shirt and jeans. I couldn't help but think back to Madonna's video for 'Like A Prayer' in the '80s and the outrage at the figure of the 'black Jesus' and the burning crosses. 

It's a free exhibition in the ground floor galleries that you can visit after you've seen the collection and before the shop and exit.

'Artemisia' at the National Gallery

The first major exhibition of paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi in the UK has just opened at the National Gallery in London and it's well worth visiting. She's not a terribly well known artist so hopefully this exhibition will change that and give her the credit she deserves. Born in 1593, her father was an artist and follower of Caravaggio and that influenced her own paintings. She was raped by an artist friend of her dad's who was successfully prosecuted and she is noted for her depictions of powerful women, occasionally cutting off mens' heads. 

She left Rome for Florence where she became the first woman admitted to the Accademia, lived in Venice and Naples, was commissioned by Charles I and spent time in London with her dad who died here and then she returned to Italy. She had children, had love affairs and enjoyed an international reputation as an artist at the time but that reputation diminished over the years and is only now being rediscovered.

'Artemisia' is in the exhibition suite in the Sainsbury Wing and is quite large and spread out. Most of her paintings are large and it doesn't take many to fill up the walls of each room. There are also a few original letters from her and her husband with the curly script you'd expect from the first half of the 1600s. You need to be masked to get into the National Gallery at the allotted time on your ticket, then head downstairs to the exhibition space and join a short queue to get into the exhibition. There's a free audioguide to the exhibition you can stream and listen to on your own device of choice if you want to. And then in you go to the exhibition.

Artemisia seems to have had a stock of subjects she painted and painted again, such as Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes, sometimes with spouts of blood and other times with dribbles. Also Susanna and the Elders where the old men spy on the youthful Susanna and threaten to report her as whore unless she has sex with them. Susanna is definitely the victim of men in these paintings, trying to cover her nakedness from the lecherous old men.

It's difficult not to associate these paintings with her experience of being raped as a girl/young woman. There are also paintings of the death of Cleopatra and the asp, a powerful queen choosing death over slavery. There's a strong sense of morality, of nobility, in these paintings. Better to die in control of one's destiny than die as a slave. 

She used her own image as the basis for some of her paintings, such as her painting of Saint Catherine with her wheel symbol and holding the palm leaf of a martyr which is in the National Gallery collection and herself as a painter in the 'Allegory of Painting' in the Royal Collection. There's also a self-portrait of her as a lute player. I prefer the Saint Catherine painting since we see the face almost full on with a direct gaze, a confident woman knowing her fate and willing to face it without fear or shame.

It's well worth seeing this exhibition if you can, the first exhibition of her work in the UK. She led a colourful life and it's been interesting finding out more about her.

'The Royal Ballet: Back on Stage' at the Royal Opera House

After seven long months, the Royal Ballet returned to the stage of the Royal Opera House with a leap and a twirl last night, dancing a wonderful series of highlights from their repertoire. The stalls had been removed to create enough space for the socially distanced orchestra and there was a specially invited audience of students and NHS staff to help create the atmosphere in those red plush seats. I, of course, had the best seat in the house, on my couch with a glass of red wine and some nibbles (not normally allowed in the venerable auditorium) that I managed to sneak past the ushers.

The performance opened with the orchestra playing the 'Sleeping Beauty' overture before launching into an ensemble piece by Shechter, followed by a pas de deux from 'Swan Lake' and we're off and leaping with one dance following another, solos, pas de deux, small groups and full ensemble pieces. Every couple of dances would see a short on-stage interview by Anita Rani talking to members of the Royal Ballet or short video pieces and that format worked really well. There was a short interview with Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor and a piece from his marvellous 'Woolf Works' which saw Edward Watson dancing as Septimus Smith from 'Mrs Dalloway' which may well be his final performance on that stage since he announced his retirement at the start of the year. 

There were scenes from 'Jewels' with Sarah Lamb and Ryoichi Hirano, a great dance from 'Carousel', a ballet I've not seen before with Mayara Magri and Matthew Ball, and the fantastic non-stop movement of the final scene of Wheeldon's 'Within The Golden Hour'. We saw Alexander Campbell dance Oberon from 'The Dream' and Francesca Hayward dance Juliet from 'Romeo and Juliet', a pas de deux from the lovely 'La Fille Mal Gardee', Natalia Osipova dancing a frantic 'Medusa', Marianela Nunez dancing from 'Don Quixote' and a lovely video of the people of Doncaster recreating moments from 'Romeo and Juliet'. 

The show ended with MacMillan's 'Elite Syncopations' and music by Scott Joplin and others and the Royal Ballet flooding the stage with their colourful costumes as the whole cast appeared, either dancing or, at the end, taking their bows. A perennial crowd-pleaser and the perfect ending to the evening's performance.

It was a joy to see the Royal Ballet back on that stage doing what dancers do - dance. And provide spectacle, colour, skill, athleticism, impossible movements, sensitivity and exuberance. Wow. As ever, a ballet performance is more than the dance, it's the costumes, the music, the lighting, the scenery, the whole package. I'm sure all the dancers were on a high afterwards but I wonder if they really understand what they gave to us, the online audience? The joy, the delight, the hope. I admit to clapping at the screen of my laptop as I celebrated their proud moments and shared in the fun. You have a huge repertoire, Royal Ballet, so do it again. Pretty please?

Photos by me from my laptop screen so apologies for the poor quality but they're authentic.