My half a day in London - Victoria and Albert Museum (cont.) - The 8th of September 2016

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Standing Buddha - sandstone - AD 450-600 (Gupta Dinasty).

The figure embodies the classic style of the Gupta Dinasty associated with the monastic centre of Sarnath. Features of the style include the monastic robe that clings tightly to a slightly swaying body and the serene introspective expression of the face. Two devotees kneel at either side of the Buddha's feet.

Figure of Samurai (1860) dressed in armour (1800).

The life-size human figure with its highly realistic features is one of the known traditional "living dolls" used both in Japan and in international exhibitions abroad where they featured in dramas about Japanese life and history.

 

No masks of a young woman, a young nobleman and a demon - carved and painted cypress - About 2000

Masks are used to create a mood of yugen, a Japanese aesthetic concept suggestive of sadness, mystery, elegance and calm.

 

Processional mask of Bodhisattva - Carved, lacquered and gilded wood, with painted details -1400-1500.

In Buddhism, a Bodhisattva is an enlightened being who helps others on their path to enlightenment. This mask would have been worn along with sumptuous robes for a religious ceremony in which monks processed around the buildings and grounds of a temple complex. This created the effect of temple sculptures coming to life and served as a reminder of the world to come.

 

The Nativity - cast of Antonio Rossellino - About 1450-75.

Carving the marble roundel was a feat of great skill, with its depth, perspective and multiple figures. The 19th-century plaster copy was also a technical challenge. Rosselino's scene is richly pictorial and narrative, and reflects the influence of contemporary painters.

 

David - cast of Michelangelo - 1501-4

David, slayer of the giant Goliah was a symbol of civic freedom for the Florentine Republic.Michaelangelo carved his David from a single block of marble. It was placed outside the Palazzo Vecchio until 1873. The marble copy that replaced it shortly aterwards still stands there today.

 

The Visitation - cast of Luca della Robia - Before 1445.

The Virgin, pregnant with Christ Child embraces the kneeling figure of her older cousin St. Elizabeth, who is pregnant with St. John the Baptist. Luca della Robia's original figures  in Pistola are glazed white  with colour and gilding. Although plainer, the plaster copy nonetheless evokes the emotional scen and the expressive figures.

Pulpit - cast of Nicola Pisano - 1260.
The cast reproduces a richly carved pulpit, the most celebrated work of Nicola Pisano.  It does not reproduce the colour of the original - green and red marble for the columns and naturalistic colour in the carved scenes of the life of Christ. Pisano was an important forerunner of Italian Renaissance sculpture because of his pioneering use of classical themes, for which the pulpit was especially admired.

We stopped several times on the ground level side corridors to admire the mosaic paintings hanging on the walls, as we were on our way to the inner garden-like pavilion,  where a few children played on its pond under their parents' supervision.

 

 

We sat there for a while before heading back in to continue our visit  still on the groundfloor. though this time on the side galleries.

 

Sunna - Portland stone - 1728-30 by John Michael Rysbrack.

Sunna is from a unique series of Saxon Gods that Lord Cobham commissioned for his gardens at Stowe. Each God was traditionally associated with a day of the week, with Sunna representing Sunday. This figure is siad to have been lost for many years, having been only rediscovered in 1996.

Valour and Cowardice - 1857-66 by Alfred Stevens.

This is a full-size model for one of the groups on the bronze monument to the Duke of Wellington in St. Paul's Cathedral - a work that occupied much of  Stevens' career. Here Valour crushes Cowardice.

 

 

 

 

Peasant woman nursing a baby - Terracotta - 1873 - Aimé-Jules Dalou.
Dalou is said to have spent seven years in London and during this time produced many intimate domestic scenes, He explored this composition in numerous versions using various media and experimenting with different sizes.

Despite not having gone beyond the groundfloor (because of my tempoorary physical limitation) we were both very happy to have selected this and no other Museum. We did enjoy every minute of it.

 

 

My half a day in London - Victoria and Albert Museum - The 8th of September 2016

I managed to sleep quite well and despite having realised my feet weren't in a much better condition than they had been the previous evening I risked nevertheless to head towards the Victoria and Albert Museum in order to visit it, once I had visited it almost forty years back.

Natural History Museum

Mia and I didn't realise then that we would spend the next three hours strolling around one single floor exhibition, having therefore seen just a limited number of artefacts the Museum has to offer its visitors. I did recall very little of what I had seen many years ago but it was irrelevant because the truth is I was in my element among those majestic sculptures.

Samson slaying a Philistine - about 1562 by Giovanni Bologna.  Giambologna as the sculptor was know worked at the court of the Medici Grand Dukes of Tucani and is said to have become the most famous and influential sculptor of his day.This spectacular marble group was his first major commission.

The rape of Proserpina - about 1565. Probably based on a model by Vincenzo de Rossi.This dramatic sculpture shows Pluto, the king of the underworld carrying off Proserpina whom he had fallen in love.

Water spout cast in about 1490-1520. This mask and pipe channelled water from a cistern to fall into a basin below. The peculiar design shows a dragon's face which emerges from a lion's head.

 

Effigy of Don Garcia de Osorio -  alabaster - 1499

Dom Garcia, a knight of the Order of Santiago was buried in the church of San Pedro in Toledo. Though he wears a chain mail and armour, his helmet has been removed and placed at his feet with a symbolic figure of mourning.

The cross on the left breast of his cloak shows that he belonged to the Order of Santiago, a combined military and religious order dedicated to St. James and founded in the 12th century. The lowest arm of the cross resembles a sword blade and reflects the dual nature of the Order.

Effigy od Dona Maria Perea - 1499-1505

Dona Maria, whose husband 's effigy is shown nearby holds rosary beads as a sign of piety. This piety is also symbolised by the books at her feet. Her sober, modest dress is nonethless expensive, as suggested by the delicate eçbroidery edging her undergarment. It is believed both effigies may originally have been painted.

Virgin of Misericordia - About 1440-41 by Bartolomeo Bon and workshop.

A Venetian scuola (confraternity) commissioned this sculpture to sit over the entrance of their meeting house. Members of the confraternity shelter under the Virgin's cloak. Surrounding the Virgin are prophets seated in the tree of jesse. They hold scrolls announcing the coming of Christ, who is shown as a baby on the Virgin's breast. The pointed arch reflects the Gothic style of the original setting. Bartolomeo Bon was a member of the confraternity and one of the most important scupltors in Renaissance in Venice. The mandorla (from the Italian word for "almond") was a type of halo that enclosed the entire body and was usually used to depict moments that transcend time and space.

 

 

 

 

 

The Boppard Altarpiece - limewood and pine, painted and gilded - About 1500-10.

The central scene shows the Virgin presenting the Christ Child to her Mother St. Anne. The altarpiece probably comes from the Church of the Carmelites in Boppard, near Koblenz.

The death of the Virgin -  Walnut, painted and gilded - About 1430-40

Her Christ shown with his hand raised in blessing, has returned to transport his Mother's soul and body to Heaven upon her death. Some of the Apostles are reading  prayers. On the far right, one apostle holds a censer so another can pour incense into it from an incense boat.

 

 

 

 

 

Altarpiece with the adoration of the shepherds - Poplar, painted and gilded -  About 1500- Probably by Giovan Pietro de Donati and Giovani Ambrogio de Donati.
This example of pala with figures on both high and low relief is typical of sculptors from Lombardy.

The Brixen Altarpiece - limewood and pine, painted and gilded - About 1500-10 by Rupert Potsch and Philipp Diemer.

The Virgin Mary sits in the centre, flanked by St. Florian and St. John the Baptist. The lower section was a cupboard for relics. Its two central panel showing St. Dorothy and St. Catherine of Alexandria, qre hinged and served as doors.

 

St. Margaret and the dragon - limestone - About 1530-40

St. Margaret is shown with her symbol of the dragon. Pregnant women called upon her to protect them in childbirth because of her miraculous escape from the belly of a dragon.

The adoration of the kings - tin glazed terracotta - About 1500-10 by Andrea della Robbia

The arms on the lower panel show that the wealthy Albizzi family commissioned this altarpiece. The exotic heargear worn by the King's followers signifies that they were from the East.

 

The raising of Lazarus - fresco transferred to canvas - About 1538-40 by Perino del Vaga.

 

This fresco is all that survives of the decoration commissioned by the magistrate Angelo Massimi for his chapel in Rome. Perino de Vaga trained with Raphael in Rome but was later influenced by Michelangelo. Here Christ extends his hand towards Lazarus, whom he has miraculously revived from the dead. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Section from a screen -  Marble - About 1272 by the workshop of Nicola Pisano.

This relief came from a screen that separated the clergy's seating area from the choir in Sienna Cathedral. The lion and cub are a symbol of Christ's resurrection, as it was believed that cubs were born dead and revived at the touch of a parent's breath.

(To be continued)