V&A Rennaissance in Europe, 1400 - 1600

Location: Victoria & Albert Museum, London

The V&A, as it is better known as, lies almost adjacent to the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. Following the same style of building as the surrounding area, but taken to a grand level, this impressive place offers nothing of what is inside.

The museum was founded in 1852, it houses one of the largest collections of art in every single medium, from all corners of the world, and from all of human history. Named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the museum has 143 galleries, and it is one or two of these that is the focus of this post.

The museum houses artifacts collected or donated from around the world, and are organised by region and era that they came from. So this visit introduces an interesting room in the museum, the Rennaissance Europe, from 1400 to 1600. While not covering the entire collection, this review takes a sample of one of the many rooms on offer, in a long hall with a high arched glass roof. The room is a tasteful cream colour, with dark marble columns at each end.

Starting at one end of the room, the most immediate artifact is a large stone well head decorated with the arms of the Concoreggio family, dating to 1450. Nearby lie the stemma and roundels of various family arms, such as Réne of Anjou; the roundels are of classical heads, intricately made of ceramic.

There are some statues on the other side of the room, depicting characters from classical Greek, Roman mythology, and biblical heroes. Some notable examples woulb be Jason with the Golden Fleece, Samson slaying a Philistine, and the Rape of Proserpina. The statues show the Rennaissance tendency to the dramatic in depicting classical and biblical scenes, but the Jason statue shows a more calm, satisfied scene of Jason with his Golden Fleece.

Moving past these to the wall, there are a number of interesting architectural and decorative pieces. Some of these would be a doorway, though little other information was given, top of a Dormer window, balcony panels from the Palazzo Pola, and a Dormer window from Montal, all dating from 1490 to 1557. These were attractive pieces that intrigued the author's attention in depicting how the streets of those times would have looked, with that distinctive architecture.

More statues are found around this point, amongst a plethora of capitals (column heads) and well heads, in the style of the Rennaissance families of Italy. Of these, there is the highly intricate and delicate looking fountain surmounted by a small statuette of David, matching and adjacent statues of Apollo and Zephyr, and one of Saint George and the Dragon.

The last few exhibits in this sections are of a morbid nature, starting with the oddly-shaped tombstone of Antonio and Caterina Maggi de Bassano from 1520, the grand Monument of the Marchese Spineta Malaspina, funerary chapel doorways, and a selection of richly carved effigies such as Don García de Osorio and Doña María de Perea. Finally, worth looking at is the tomb for a member of the Moro family.

The next half of this unfolded in a distinctly christian theme, with the room filled with exhibits from a number of churches, monasteries, and abbeys. For example, as labeled, some very good altarpieces to view include the 'Life of the Virgin', the 'Virgin, Child and God', with the 'Adoration of the Shepherds', the distinctly vandalised Sutton Valence altarpiece, and lastly the Troyes altarpiece. 

 

Stained glass windows are dotted around and illuminated, such as the Mariawald windows, windows showing St. Peter and St. Paul, and many others around the edges of the hall. Statuettes are also a prominent feature of churches, and in line with this is a collection of many such statuettes of figureheads. One set of statuettes all feature St. Catharine of Alexandria, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Ursula. There was a semi-decayed wooden statuette of the Angel Gabriel, then there was St. Margaret and the Dragon, and finally St. Peter again. While not exhaustive at all, these are some particular examples that should be regarded on any visit.

There was a large altar frame around a painting of the Virgin of Soreto with St. Jerome. The end of the room contains an altarpiece and tabernacle from the Santa Chiara Chapel which dates back to 1400. Behind this, there is a selection of other church artifacts of an even richer nature, such as the expensive metal pieces, incense holders, chalices, candlesticks, and metal altar crucifixes. On the other side is a selection of the fine cloth and robes worn by members of the church, including a selection of various mitres.

This concludes this particular section of the V&A museum, and there will be many more visits to come, especially in this area which offers so much for the visitor to see. Photographs are courtesy of the author himself, once he finally worked out how to download them to his computer!

Serpentine Gallery, London

Location: Hyde Park, London

This surprising find is found in the heart of Hyde Park, a faux classical building lies nestled amongst the trees of the park. The Serpentine gallery is aimed at providing free art exhibitions with an educational point of view.

Going inside, the first room opens up with a display of step ladders with various instruments stuck to them. Designed by a musician, it displays all the instruments that were used in the band.

Beyond that, there is a film theatre, showing a variety of different films, not very well known films and by independent producers. In particular, the film on was called Fulll Firearms, by Emily Wardell, and it was full of interesting and well-shot scenes, and a lot of emotion involved in each scene. Art was featured throughout in all its forms, from painting, to clothing, architecture, poetry, and song.

Moving through, the next large room featured a number of props, with a cage on one side, knots of cloth knotted round the bars with english and arabic writing on. On top of the cage were female cloth dolls, and below were a few cloth houses, words sewn on them spelling out 'Made in Egypt'.

A tent dominates the center of the room, with pictures of people, and arabic writings, all below the letters 'KFC', and in front of the tent was a cushioned mat with words written over it, and the author's signature in the corner, Khalil Gibran.

A table is at the far end of the room is a table with three television sets around it, each showing short films done by students and young filmmakers of No.w.here free cinema school. The first film was of scenes of Edgeware road, and of pieces of art around London, most of which featured a particular girl as if in a typical daily setting. The next features a man, covered in newspaper clipping, head to foot, walking around and greeting people on the street, shot in black and white, with a grainy old-style.

Last was of London street scenes, of the Edgeware road area, and slogans would appear up on the screen, in an almost mocking fashion, such as 'morality' and 'crime & punishment'. The film far more clearly shows the current issues of paranoia and terrorist threats in a mocking light, with words such as 'everyone is a terrorist' against a typical street market scene.

The rest of the room has a variety of wall mounted television screen, all showing other short films and documentaries on life in Egypt, highlighting the variety of issues that plague the country, or as a cultural setting. Amongst these are a set of five painting by Marwan Rechmaoui, paintings of street maps in various style, in a mock child-drawing fashion, with arabic writing for street names and locations.

Following this, the next room on the otherside of the building, starts with a poem called 'Maps, oh maps' by Etel Adnan, and the adjacent wall features lots of VHS cassette tapes stuck to the wall in ad hoc fashion, with the caption reading that they are all fragments of the film called 'the three disappearances of Soad Hosni'.

This leads to another large room, where the nearest display is a collage of photos, most of generic objects in London, with the middle set of photos showing different people in the background, and the foreground of a young person holding a hand-drawn placard with words describing the people in the background, such as 'tourist', 'travellers' and 'business talkers'. Next is a poster titled '/ Protocols for Poem Objects /', with a variety of categories below, and examples in poetry form for each. Next to this was a table with a number of books, collections of poetry by various authors.

The opposing wall features a large poster of text from the 'Bidoun library', and interspersed throughout are several books, stuck by their spines to the poster, pages opened out naturally.

Finally, at the end of the room was a projector displaying a short film of conflict and life in Egypt, in a mock-documentary form, using children as actors to show people and soldiers in states of travel, conflict, and burial. The aim of this, as explained by the caption was to challenge the social structure by its use of children to show some of the harsh realities of life in Egypt.

The final room, at the back of the building, has a few displays, first being a collage of photographs, stories and captions by CAMP, of various controversial publications in the history of Edgeware road. There were also two televisions of different short films, first was on the close of the last pub in Edgeware road, and some words displayed on the screen between scenes about why. The other showed an arabic comedy with subtitles.

This was a rare find, and worth going to see, not least because it costs nothing. It is within Hyde Park itself, and makes for an excellent diversion during a walk through the park, away from the busy streets of London itself. It is educational in its own way, showing facets of Egyptian life, conflict and culture, and the film theatre is an excellent place to spend some time watching thought provoking films.

Images courtesy of theWhatWhereWhen and the Serpentine Gallery websites.