Favourite Paintings: 'Two Satyrs' by Rubens

'Two Satyrs' by Peter Paul Rubens is in the Alte Pinakotek in Munich and I saw it when I visited the gallery to see the wonderful 'Florence' exhibition in January 2019. After seeing the exhibition I went for a cuppa and a cake in the cafe and thought I may as well see the gallery's collection. I expected it to be like any provincial museum anywhere but I was quickly disabused of that misconception. It has an astonishing collection with loads of great paintings including 'Two Satyrs' by Rubens.

The painting may be called 'Two Satyrs' but there's really only one satyr here and he's the one looking right at you. There's something about that look that says he's already had his fun and now he wants a glass of wine, but then he sees you and you're the focus of his attention. And you know what? He'll have his way with you. He will. That's what satyrs do.

I have no idea why Rubens did this painting, why it was commissioned, how he found the model, what it's meant to represent, and I don't care. It's about nature and about sex, about passion and lust, about giving in to those primitive urges that make us who we are, about stripping back the trappings of civilisation and presenting the primitive us. It's you and me.

A Decade of Exhibitions 2010-2019

At the end of the decade I thought I'd look back at exhibitions I saw over that time and see if I could come up with a top ten. I couldn't so I've listed my top 14 exhibitions. The criteria are really quite broad, not simply those I've personally liked but also those I've learned from, exhibitions that have brought together the widest range of paintings rather than going for the obvious exhibits, a whole host of things.

They're in chronological order rather than a countdown to the top exhibition - that's a step too far into the impossible. So here they are, the best exhibitions I've seen in the last decade.

Fra Angelico and the Masters of Light - Musee Jacquemart-Andre, Paris (2011)

The first exhibition about Fra Angelico I ever attended was at the Musee Jacquemart-Andre in Paris in 2011 and that was the first time I'd seen the widest range of his works outside of San Marco in Florence. The exhibition was made up of 20-odd paintings by Fra Angelico and about the same number by contemporary artists he influenced or was influenced by. I still remember standing in the middle of a small room being surrounded by paintings of the Virgin & Child by Fra Angelico, the vivid colours, the serenity, the different compositions - definitely a wow moment.

Paul Klee: Making Visible - Tate Modern, London (2014)

I've liked works by Paul Klee since I first came across him in school in about 1978. He's not one of the most famous artists of the 20th Century but he's one of the most influential, being a member of various art movements in the first half of the century including Der Blaue Reiter in Munich. I remember this exhibition as being very big, and it was, but largely because his paintings are mainly relatively small so more fit onto the walls. There was so much colour in those galleries, shapes and textures, mesmerising paintings to gaze at and decide what they're about - is that a house in the hills? a human figure? or just a mass of colours? It doesn't matter really, the beauty emanates out of the paintings. I went back several times to be in rooms surrounded by those amazing paintings.

Matisse: The Cut-Outs - Tate Modern, London (2014)

The follow-up exhibition to the Paul Klee exhibition at Tate Modern in 2014 was about Matisse and his cut-outs. The cut-outs are just that, coloured paper cut up and torn into different shapes and pasted  onto a background, so simple and yet so effective. Monsieur Matisse was an old man when he started creating his cut-outs and it was great seeing early film of him working as part of the exhibition. As he grew older he needed to use his assistants to place the coloured papers just right to fit his vision. How can so much beauty come from cut up bits of paper? It was an astonishing exhibition that I re-visited several times.

Inventing Impressionism - National Gallery, London (2015)

There were many Impressionist exhibitions over the decade and I attended quite a few but the Inventing Impressionism was rather special. It was based on the collection of the art dealer Paul Durant-Ruel who championed the Impressionist painters in the early days and virtually all of the paintings in the exhibition went through his hands at some stage. The exhibition contained some astonishing works that were completely new to me, a high quality exhibition without any filler at all. There was a quote on the wall of the final room of the exhibition from Durant-Ruel, 'At last the Impressionist masters triumphed...'. I loved that quote, naming the impressionist painters as 'masters', equal to the Old Masters we're familiar with.

Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun - Le Grand Palais, Paris (2015)

I'd never heard of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun until I went to the exhibition of her portraits in Paris in 2015 and I'm so pleased I went. Madame Vigee Le Brun had an astonish life, being the favourite portraitist of Marie Antoinette, going into exile during the French Revolution due to her connection to royalty, travelling around Europe with her daughter making her living by painting portraits in country after country before eventually returning to France and dying in her own bed when in her 80s after attending a party that evening. Her legacy was on display in that huge exhibition that seemed to go on and on, with portrait after portrait, so lifelike and alive in expressions and colours, a true master of portraiture. The poster for the exhibition was one of her own self-portraits.

Sonia Delaunay - Tate Modern, London (2015)

I've known of the Delaunay's for quite a while but mainly Robert, Sonia's husband, so I looked forward to seeing this exhibition of Sonia's work. They worked together in the early years developing radical colour theories and putting them into practice in similar but subtly different ways. From the minutes I walked into the exhibition I was surrounded by colour, by Sonia's sketches and paintings, illustrations for Dadaist poetry, designs for clothes and samples of her work, so much variety and colour everywhere. It was great to learn about her life and work, about how she's quoted as saying she discovered black when in her 60s, about how she continued painting and experimenting into her old age in Paris. I was mightily impressed by this exhibition and, more so, by the variety of her work, always inventing, always creative.

Painting the Modern Garden: From Monet to Matisse - Royal Academy, London (2016)

Another great exhibition was all about paintings of gardens in all their variety, all the colour and shapes and textures of flowers and trees and shrubs, gardens with people in them, with country cottages, with walls and just flowers. Lots of flowers. I loved it. As well as paintings it included information about the gardening habits of some of the artists, who swapped seedlings with who and who liked to paint someone else's garden. There was a  great photo of Kandinsky in his garden with a shovel, wearing shorts and with a cigarette in his mouth. I wanted to jump into some of the paintings and wallow in the flowers colours. The only poor thing about the exhibition was the rather dull poster featuring a detail of a Monet.

A Thyssen Never Seen - CaixaForum, Barcelona (2016)

I went to Barcelona to see this exhibition, mainly to see a beautiful Virgin & Child by Fra Angelico, one of my favourite paintings of his, but got caught by the sheer range of paintings in the exhibition which was showing off the Thyssen collection from Madrid. From early Renaissance paintings to modern works from the mid-20th Century, there was something there for everyone. Whoever curated the exhibition and managed to get so many masterpieces from the Thyssen-Bornamisza Museum in Madrid must've been a good negotiator since it was an amazing variety of paintings from across the centuries, all first rate and no filler.

Out of Chaos - Laing Gallery, Newcastle (2017)

The 'Out of Chaos' exhibition in Newcastle was in partnership with the Ben Uri collection in London, a collection of works telling the tale of migration and escape from persecution in the first half of the 20th Century. Of course, not everyone escaped and some of the works shown were poignant in that the artists were killed or died before they could reach safety and their potential forever lost. I can still remember some of the terrible images in those paintings. I was pleased to see a couple of small works by Sonia Delaunay since she and her husband fled persecution and war. It was a powerful exhibition with some very powerful tales to tell.

Raphael: The Drawings - Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2017)

This exhibition at the Ashmolean in Oxford consisted of drawings, big and small, by Raphael, all of which I'd never seen before but some of which were sketches for elements of paintings and I'd seen a couple of those finished paintings (such as Disco Jesus in the Vatican). To say that Raphael was a good drawer is an understatement. It was particularly good to see him practicing his compositions, having a character face this way and then that way as he experimented with what might be the most effective or dramatic. It's good to get a glimpse of how an artist of his stature worked.

Picasso 1932 - Tate Modern, London (2018)

This was  an odd exhibition in many ways - not everything in it was first rate Picasso but everything was authentic. It showed us his works from a very experimental year when he was already rich and famous but wasn't sure where to go next artistically. There was also one large room put aside to show us the works in one of his one-man exhibitions he curated that year. I loved how each exhibition was labeled with the day and date the work was done - so many works completed in less than a day before he moved on to something else. The sheer creativity of the man is astounding.

Florence - Alte Pinakothek, Munich (2019)

This was a truly great exhibition on so many levels, with great paintings from about 1300 - 1500 by painters associated with Florence. Giotto, Gaddi, Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippo, Ghirlandaio, Leonardo, Fra Bartolomeo, Botticelli and a host of others. Altarpieces were re-imagined using available predella panels and side panels, early portraits showing the development of portraiture - so much stuff to marvel at. The museum had started work on this exhibition five years ago and it must have been a joy to see it come to fruition and see it constantly packed with visitors, both local and international to enjoy the wealth of glorious art gathered together in the same place for the first time. Well done Alte Pinakothek!

Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance - Prado, Madrid (2019)

A large exhibition of works by Fra Angelico from all over the world to help celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Prado, all centred on the newly restored 'Annunciation' by Angelico that is one of the prides of the Prado's collection. It really was a stunning collection of paintings from major, large collections and obscure small pieces from small collections in towns around Europe and the USA. It was startling to see all these paintings by Fra Angelico in the same place, see his art develop, his story-telling improving, the subjects he chose to paint and the colours he used. The ficus was on one decade of 1420-30 when Angelico reached his peak with his glorious Virgin & Child paintings and the masterpiece of the 'Annunciation'. So much care went into the detail of this exhibition and chosing Adam and Eve from the 'Annunciation' to front the exhibition was inspired. Well done Prado!

Keith Haring - Tate Liverpool (2019)

The final highlight exhibition for me was the recent exhibition of works by Keith Haring at Tate Liverpool. I suspect we can all recognise his cartoon-like works but I didn't know much about him before this exhibition, his activism and his untimely early death. He would've been just a few years older than me if he hadn't died and I can't help but wonder what he'd be producing these days. It was a very big exhibition with loads of his stuff on paper, vinyl and canvas, big pieces and small, some as stand0alone works, others were for posters and his activism. His early works about AIDS were particularly powerful and his later works reflected this except they were bigger, more complicated and more painful to see. Tate Liverpool obviously understood this and the final image, just as you left the gallery, was a blown up photo of Keith with his top off and wearing parched jeans having a bit of a dance and a giggle, reminding us of the fun he enjoyed and his indomitable spirit manifest in his art.

So there you have it, a decade of exhibitions. There were many more over the decade, well over 100 or more, but these are my favourites, the ones I think back to and enjoy, even the painful ones. I'm quite pleased that so many were outside London and outside the country - you don't have to be in London to see great art, it's happening everywhere!

There were many more that weren't about painting as well, exhibitions of sculpture, folk crafts, ancient artefacts, Buddhist scriptures, manuscripts, punk memorabilia, all sorts of stuff really. Take a look at what's happening in your local gallery or museum - or maybe your local coffee house or pub even - since amazing things happen everywhere. The important thing is to open your eyes and your mind - you never know what you might find.

The Alte Pinakothek in Munich

I visited the Alte Pinakothek in Munich to see its great 'Florence' exhibition so, while I was there, I needed to look round its collection, up the long, long staircase to the first floor. It's Florentine Renaissance paintings were downstairs in the exhibition so I was expecting gaps in the collection but it was still surprisingly good and the rooms were mainly surprisingly empty of visitors - I was the only one in some rooms - since everyone was downstairs in the crowded exhibition.

The first few rooms were interesting enough with large early northern paintings, all rather similar in style and content. But it pays to keep your eyes peeled since I found this lovely little painting of the 'Tower of Babel' by Lucas van Valkenborch, a copy of the painting by van Eyck. I quite like the idea of copies being in museums in their own right as works of art. It's very small and easily missed.  Further along were large paintings of the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, also copies of van Eyck, this time from panels in the Ghent Altarpiece. They were really good, almost life-sized and quite jewel-like to see (my photo doesn't do them justice).  They were painted by M van Coxie in the mid-1500s.

Keep walking and you'll find paintings by Lucas Cranach, quite a few by Rogier van der Weyden, Hans Memling and others - it's almost a who's who of northern Renaissance painters. The northern painters used oil to mix their paints well before the Italian painters and their paints still glow with colour and life as they strove for ever greater realism and accuracy in their paintings. Here's a rather lovely 'Adoration of the Magi' scene by van der Weyden. There are many great paintings from the northern Renaissance and it was difficult to choose just one and I picked this for the colours. It was painted in 1455 and it's a tribute to him and his workshop that the colours remain so vibrant.

Then you come across one of the most wonderful paintings in the collection, a self-portrait by Albrecht Durer, resplendent in his expensive coat and his carefully coiffed ringlets. What a dandy and what a handsome man he was. My photograph is awful and has caught too much light but trust me, this is a beautiful painting and one of the highlights of the collection. By any standards, Durer was a great painter and a great draughtsman and he did this painting when he was only 28. To give it its full title, this is 'Self-Portrait with Fur-Trimmed Robe' from 1500. It's inscribed with the words in Latin, "I, Albrecht Durer of Nuremberg, portrayed myself in appropriate colours aged twenty-eight years". Is this a tribute to overwhelming vanity or is this an advert that says, 'give me a commission and this is what you'll get from me'. I suspect the latter. It really is an astonishing painting.

Moving forward to the end of the 1500s we come across loads of astonishing paintings by Rubens. Painting after painting - he was obviously a favourite of whoever developed the collection. I really need to do some work on Rubens one of these days.

There's a great painting of the 'Drunken Silenus' (there's a different version in the National Gallery in London which I prefer), a portrait of Rubens and his wife as a wedding portrait (and they made a handsome couple indeed), but the painting that stopped me in my tracks was 'The Death of Seneca'. It's an astonishing painting in which the teacher of stoicism accepts his fate and commits suicide. The body is based on a classical statue Rubens drew in Rome and the head and face are based on a bust of Seneca. I was browsing round the paintings, this one's a Rubens, that one's a Rubens and then I saw this and stopped dead to gaze at it. What a powerful painting, almost life-sized and very difficult to ignore. A moment in time captured by Rubens forever in incredible detail.

Another painting that stopped my perambulations was 'Two Satyrs'. Just look at that satyr in the front and tell me he's a saint in disguise. No, *that* satyr understands getting drunk and rutting with whoever is around and will enjoy it immensely. From the look of him he's just been very naughty and plans to be naughty again quite soon.

But let's not forget that Rubens is also justly famous for his religion works and this crucifixion caught my eye. Just look at those arms being stretched and pulled down by the weight of the body, putting more pressure on the nailed feet. A very simple and very effective composition to meditate on.

There are, of course, many more great paintings than I can cover in this short blog about the museum, but I'm pleased I took the time to explore it. I was visiting to see the 'Florence' exhibition (one of the best I've seen in a long time) and I was almost expecting the collection to be rather provincial with the truly great works being in the Gemaldegallerie in Berlin, but I was wrong. There are more than enough great works to keep any art lover happy in the Munich Alte Pinakothek. I hope to visit again one day.

And then down, down, down the stairs to the ground floor...

'Florence' exhibition at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich

The big exhibition in the world of early Renaissance art at the moment is 'Florence and its Painters' at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. The National Gallery can make a claim to that title with its Bellini and Mantegna exhibition but the Pinakothek wins for the sheer number of extraordinary exhibits and the range of artists represented. Sub-titled 'From Giotto to Leonardo' provides the scope of the artists featured in the exhibition and there are paintings, statues, drawings, books and reconstructed altarpieces. There is a record number of works by Fra Angelico with 11 paintings and three drawings, panels by Giotto, paintings and drawings by Domenico Ghirlandaio and his brother Davide, Donatello, works by Fra Filippo Lippi and by Filipino Lippi, Botticelli, Verrocchio and Leondardo and a host of other Florentine artists. The range of exhibits is quite astonishing with excellent labels and explanatory notes in German and English.

The earliest works are a mere 700 years old and are three small panels by Giotto: the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and Christ saving the souls from Limbo (with Adam and Eve at the front of the queue to get out of Limbo). I'm always astonished that small paintings that old have somehow managed to survive over the centuries and retain much of their colour - that is a great tribute to artistry of the masters' workshops and the skills of the craftsmen who mixed the paints for their masters, prepared the panels or cleaned the brushes. We'll never know their names but an artist of Giotto's stature had a good sized workshop to help him in his endeavours. The downside to seeing these panels is that they're displayed in what is effectively a corridor which is busy so there's not the comfort or convenience to really look at them undisturbed.

Also in the corridor are a group of six paintings by Agnolo Gaddi, two large life-sized paintings of St Nicholas of Bari and St Julian. The more interesting is St Nicholas, the forefather of Father Christmas and Santa Claus. Nicholas gave three bags of gold anonymously to the three daughters of his neighbour to provide them with a dowry and prevent their father selling them into prostitution. That was his first kindly act on his long journey into sainthood. Isn't it odd how stories start? The other small panel shows St Nicholas saving a ship at sea during a storm.

Various artists at the time and later tackled the stories around St Nicholas (there is a panel Fra Angelico in the Vatican Museums with the same story of saving a ship) but I quite liked this version by Gaddi and it works well in the context of the exhibition - Giotto worked at the start of the 1300s and Gaddi towards the end of the century, so he makes a nice springboard into the works from the 1400s which make up the majority of the exhibition.

The next room is full of the wonders of Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi as well as others, roughly contemporary but with very different approaches to life and art. Despite being a friar Filippo fathered his son, Filipino Lippi, on a Dominican nun whose name we don't know. That doesn't mean he hasn't created some wonderful art.

The first painting in the room is the gorgeous Virgin & Child with it's rich cloth of gold background partially obscuring the Roman columns of the room within while the Virgin looks at her child serenely and the child offers the viewer a blessing. I've loved this painting since I first saw it at an exhibition in Paris in 2011, the gorgeous rich blues and reds of the Virgin's clothes and the passive, almost glowing child, gazing out at the viewer. It really is a wonder. The other paintings and drawings by Fra Angelico are arranged around a reproduction of the former high altarpiece at San Marco in Florence and are included elsewhere in this blog.

A really nice touch is that there is also a small panel by Benozzo Gozzoli near the Fra's paintings - Gozzoli was a pupil and assistant to the Fra who became a master in his own right and he painted the walls of the private chapel of the Medicis in their palace in Florence. On the opposite wall is a small Annunciation painting by Zenobi Strozzi who was also thought to have worked in the workshop of Fra Angelico (although with less documented proof than with Gozzoli). Here's Gozzoli's small predella panel of 'St Zenobius Resuscitating a Dead Child'.

Moving round the room you come to a lovely, delicate 'Annunciation' by Fra Filippo Lippi with the angel Gabriel kneeling before the Virgin while, up in the top left-hand corner we see God the Father channelling his energies through a dove to represent the Holy Spirit and straight down to the Virgin, the moment of conception. Gabriel holds the stem of a lily for purity and the Virigin has just got up from reading a book. Look at the detail of the house and garden, with Filippo practicing his skills at the new-fangled thing called perspective. It's quite a large painting and is dated at around 1444 so other painters had already made inroads into naturalism and perspective. Filippo doesn't sound like someone who followed 'the rules' and his addition of God to the scene and the setting in a well-to-do house would probably have been quite dramatic at the time.

Further round the room you find three paintings of the Virgin and Child by Fra Filippo Lippi from different periods in his career. Two are hung on the walls and one is in a glass case so you can see the drawing of a face on the back of the painting. The earliest painting uses the cloth of gold motif as a screen behind the Virgin while the mid-period painting has a landscape, an emerging skill for artists at the time. The third one uses a conch shell as the background, showing that classical Roman influences were taking hold.

The main room is full of treasures, with a painting of the Virgin & Child by Leonardo da Vinci almost hidden amongst the wealth or wonderful art. There are drawings by Pollaiuolo, bronzes by Donatello, paintings by Filipino Lippi (the son of Lippi senior), Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi, Botticini, Domenico and Davide Ghirlandaio, Fra Bartolomeo and others. I mean, wow! It's not quite like being in the Uffizi but this is pretty close. I suppose the only real omission was anything by Michelangelo but you can't have everything and I suppose he really belongs to the 1500s. It was actually quite exciting wandering around this large room and finding wonder after wonder with no idea what you might stumble upon next.

Another reconstructed altar was that of Santa Maria Novella in Florence with the large painted altarpiece and two side panels by Domenico Ghirlandaio. I've marvelled at his frescos in that church and was delighted to see a rough drawing of one scene in the frescos showing the birth of the Virgin, but I'd never seen the large, main painting before, showing the Virgin and Child enthroned with saints and angels.

Here we see Saints Dominic, Michael, John the Baptist and Thomas below the Virgin and Child, St Dominic since Santa Maria Novella was and is a Dominican church. Santa Maria Novella is one of the great churches of Florence and it's a delight to see what would've been behind the high altar all those years ago.

A bit further into the exhibition, in the section covering the rise of portraiture in Florence (influenced by the great paintings of the Northern Renaissance) are two paintings of young ladies, one by Davide Ghirlandaio and one by Domenico Ghirlandaio. The brothers worked together in Domenico's workshop. I've only ever seen paintings by Davide in the Academia in Florence and I wasn't all that impressed so it was really nice to see these two small portraits side by side and not be able to tell who painted which. Clearly, there's more to Davide to explore.

The last painting in the exhibition (or, at least, the last big one in the final room) is a strangely surprising 'Lamentation" by Botticelli that has been restored especially for this exhibition. It's a big, almost life-sized painting with colours that glow (my photo doesn't do it justice).

There's none of the frivolity or playfulness of his earlier paintings, this is full-on religious, serious art.  Look at that composition, with everyone at an angle other than St Paul who stands upright, representing the true church. The thing that really caught my eye was the detail of grass curling around the toes and drapery, individual blades of grass, not just generic green foreground. And the body of the dead Christ almost glowing against the black of the Virgin's cloak. This is a very clever piece of art with a very serious subject for an altarpiece. Earlier in the exhibition we see Botticelli's 'Adoration of the Magi' which is a very different work, with his fops and dandies showing off their clothes and tights to best effect. This is most definitely a later piece by a man who's lived, loved and experienced pain.

I was really blown away by this exhibition. Such a great concept, such great works of art and something that must've taken years to put together, getting agreements to the loans and the conditions around the loans. I suspect something like 3-5 years has gone into planning and delivering this exhibition and I must congratulate everyone involved. It really is astonishing. Now that the Alte Pinakothek is on my radar for exhibitions I'll be keeping a watchful eye on whatever it does next. Thank you.

And, just because I can, here's the lovely 'Annunciation' by Zenobi Strozzi with Gabriel dressed in Fra Angelico pink.

Fra Angelico in 'Florence' at the Alte Pinakothek, Munich

The big exhibition in the world of early Renaissance art at the moment is 'Florence' at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. In particular, the exhibition boasts 11 paintings by Fra Angelico and three drawings. Most of the paintings are small predella panels but there is also the richly coloured 'Virgin and Child' that greets you at the entrance to the room that holds the collection of Fra Angelico works (as well as works by other masters).

This Virgin and Child is a late work from about 1445/50 and the Fra is at the peak of his considerable powers. The delicacy and detail of the painting, the Christ Child gazing out at the viewer offering a blessing and the serenity of the Virgin gazing at her son make this a very contemplative piece. The Virgin's halo includes the words 'Ave Maria' and the baby's halo includes the cross of the resurrection - even as a baby he was destined to die and be resurrected. The Child is also a source of light in the painting, almost radiant against the deep blues and reds of the Virgin's clothes.

A sign that this is a late painting is that the traditional cloth of gold behind the Virgin (the Fra did many paintings using this approach) does not fill the background but it is drawn back to reveal the classical columns of a Roman chamber - the influence of the ancients is starting to be felt and reflected in art. This painting was the centrepiece of the Fra Angelico exhibition at Musee Jacquemart-Andre in Paris in 2011.

The predella paintings are displayed as a reconstructed altarpiece to display them as they would have originally been seen. The photo was taken in a lucky rare moment when the crowds parted in front of the predella. This was at the high altar of San Marco in Florence and the main painting is in the museum at San Marco but there's a black and white copy of the painting on display to give the predella paintings their context. Six of the seven panels along the front of the altarpiece have been brought together from around the world (including paintings loaned from Dublin and Washington) and the two paintings that were on the sides of the altarpiece are also on display. The panels are slightly larger than A4 size, but that'll give you an idea of the size. These paintings tell the stories of the lives of Saints Cosmas and Damian, the doctor saints and patrons of the Medici family (Medici means 'doctor'), and their three brothers. The saints were quite popular at that time in Florence due to the Medicis and, for a time, they kept popping up in paintings.

In order, from left to right, we have 'The Healing of Palladia' (left side painting)

'Saints Cosmas and Damian and Their Brothers before the Proconsul Lysius'

'Saints Cosmas and Damian and Their Brothers are hurled into the sea and saved by an Angel; They liberate Lysius from Demons'

'Saints Cosmas and Damian and Their Brothers Surviving the Stake'

'The Entombment of Christ'

'Saints Cosmas and Damian and Their Brothers are Crucified, Stoned and Pierced with Arrows'

'The Funeral of Saints Cosmas and Damian and Their Brothers'

 'The Dream of Saint Justinian' (right side painting).

You need know the tales of the saints to fully understand what's going on in these paintings but they are very narrative and easy to follow. It's sometimes the details that are the most interesting in the paintings, such as seeing the brothers being hurled into the sea as punishment in the background of the painting, with the foreground seeing the brothers getting rid of demons - why did the Fra focus on that part of the story rather than the brothers being saved by an angel? And the very graphic way that the killing flames at the stake burn the captors rather than the brothers, all down to divine intervention. I also really like the 'Entombment' which, in context, sits directly below a small Crucifixion scene in the main altarpiece, nicely continuing that story.

The two final paintings are an annunciators angel and the Virgin, small paintings with a gold background, both early works and likely to be from the early 1420s. They were probably part of an altarpiece back then but it's not known which one. Altarpieces were often broken up and elements sold as paintings over the years, particularly during and after the Napoleonic Wars, so it's not that unusual to have parts of altarpieces framed separately and sold to raise funds for the church or monastery. That's also how paintings have ended up all over the world and bringing them together again in exhibitions like this is a great attraction.

As well as the paintings, there are also three drawings, a delicate crucifixion attributed to Fra Angelico and two others attributed to him and his workshop. They're all quite small drawings in various media. The thing that really stands out is the use of red ink for blood and for the cross of the resurrection in the halo - even while dying it's a sign that Christ will be resurrected.

The other two drawings are on different sides of the same piece of paper. One is a portrait of a cleric and the other sheet of paper holds three small drawings of St Lawrence, a woman holding a child and a young man with clasped hands. I don't know if these were simply practice drawings or meant as sketches to use at a later date in a painting. The woman and child could easily be the basis of a Virgin and Child painting at some point. The man with clasped hands reminds me of some of the figures in the frescoes in the Nicotine Chapel in the Vatican in Rome, but who knows?

It was a great thrill to see so many works by Fra Angelico brought together in one room of the 'Florence' exhibition, alongside works by other masters. Having 14 works by the Fra in a single exhibition is an astonishing number and it's amazing that these delicate, small paintings and drawings have survived in such good condition over the past 600 years. The Alte Pinakothek is lucky to have quite a few of these works in its own collection so, when the exhibition closes, they'll still be available to see upstairs in the main galleries. Thank you very much Pinakotheken for putting on such a great exhibition with so many works by Fra Angelico. Well done!