Renaissance
What I'm Reading: Conductor Peter PhillipsWednesday, 08 September 2010
Next to choose some favourite books is conductor Peter Phillips, whose touring lifestyle can make "summer reading" something of a year-round phenomenon. When Phillips founded the vocal ensemble the Tallis Scholars in 1973 it was a hobby among... Read more... |
Raphael: Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, Victoria & Albert MuseumWednesday, 08 September 2010
To mark Pope Benedict’s controversial visit to Britain next week, the V&A have mounted an exhibition devoted to four of the 10 tapestries Raphael designed for the Sistine Chapel – the first time they’ve ever been seen in this country. Depicting... Read more... |
Tuscany is Ready for Her Close-UpMonday, 30 August 2010
As befits a film set in Tuscany, Certified Copy is an international affair. It stars Juliette Binoche as a French gallery owner and William Shimell as an English art historian. Its Iranian director is Abbas Kiarostami. The dialogue is in three... Read more... |
Henry IV Parts One & Two, Shakespeare's GlobeFriday, 16 July 2010
Shakespeare’s two-part Henry IV cycle locks together the first modern plays in English. They strive for something quite new in drama, retaining a structural boldness and complexity seldom encountered in contemporary theatre. That's how "modern" they... Read more... |
TAD art writer shortlisted for book awardSaturday, 03 July 2010One of theartsdesk's founder-writers, Mark Hudson, has been shortlisted in the biography category of the annual Spear’s Book Awards, for his book Titian, the Last Days. Hudson did not intend to write a conventional biography of the Venetian artist,... Read more... |
Bridget Riley: From Life, National Portrait GalleryThursday, 20 May 2010
Forget about art “being about the idea” for a moment. Drawing from life is still considered by many to be the litmus test for proper artistic skill, or at least the foundation from which great art can arise. And so the enquiry, “But can he really... Read more... |
Madrigals and Scarlatti, Lufthansa Baroque FestivalMonday, 17 May 2010
"Is it music or just a bit weird?" Robert Hollingworth, director of Baroque vocal specialists I Fagiolini, was posing the question of Gesualdo, the infamous oddball composer of the late 16th century - a sort of musical Caravaggio - whose capricious... Read more... |
Women Beware Women, National TheatreTuesday, 27 April 2010
The recent fuss about British culture being anti-Catholic just because some civil servant wrote a spoof memo satirising the Pope’s upcoming visit may have been overblown, but it is certainly true that, in the past, Italy was a byword for rank... Read more... |
Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings, British MuseumSaturday, 24 April 2010
This superb exhibition of Italian Renaissance drawings, featuring 100 works and chosen from the outstanding graphic collections of the Uffizi and the British Museum, explores the evolution of the preparatory sketch in the 15th century. We learn how... Read more... |
Art Gallery: Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, V&AFriday, 11 December 2009
After the opening earlier this autumn of the reconfigured Ceramic Galleries, the Victoria & Albert Museum's renovation continues. Here is a selection of exhibits on permanent display in the newly reopened Medieval and Renaissance Galleries -... Read more... |
Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, V&AWednesday, 09 December 2009
From the façades of whole buildings to rosary beads intricately carved in ivory to depict the minuscule forms of ghouls and corpses, the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Medieval and Renaissance Galleries tell the extraordinary story of 1,300 years of... Read more... |
Titian in LoveSunday, 27 September 2009In 1522, Jacopo Tebaldi, agent of Titian’s great patron Alfonso d’Este, paid a visit to the artist who had claimed to be too ill to work. "I have been to see Titian," he wrote to Alfonso, "who has no fever at all. He looks well, if somewhat... Read more... |
