Art Journal

Queen Elizabeth II, by Dorothy Wilding

To mark the Diamond Jubilee, The National Portrait Gallery is staging an exhibition of images of Queen Elizabeth II throughout her sixty year reign. The portraits have been chosen by Paul Moorhouse, the Curator of Twentieth Century Portraits, and without reference to Buckingham Palace. As a result there are some surprising inclusions, with images by Gilbert & George, Andy Warhol, and Gerhard Richter nestled amongst the more traditional portraits by Beaton, and Annigoni. There’s even one portrait that pitches Queen Elizabeth against Diana.

There are also rare unguarded moments, such as the snapshot take on the morning of the fire at Windsor Castle – one of a series of events which marked the Queen’s ‘annus horriblis’, in the fortieth year of her reign. As a result, the exhibition can be read on many levels – from the changes in fashion to attitudes about the upper classes – the show is as much about charting changes in society over the last sixty years, as about visual appropriations of the Queen.

Included, for example, is the Sex Pistols cover of God Save the Queen in 1977, marking the Queen’s silver jubilee. Highly contentious as the time, the song was banned from many radio stations, and marks a very specific moment in punk rock history. Now some 35 years later, the cover is part of the mainstream lexicon of Elizabeth II’s imagery and is no more offensive than the other portraits on show.

Equanimity

More revolutionarily is the first lenticular portrait of the Queen Elizabeth, Equanimity, generated from over 10,000 still shots. Surprisingly, the portrait remains somehow static, despite the Queen following us around the room. Created by Chris Levine (artist) and Rob Munday (the holographer) Equanimity has now been gifted to the National Portrait gallery.

Lightness of Being

More revealing perhaps is Levine’s Lightness of Being, which shows Elizabeth with her eyes closed. This portrait shows a more vulnerable queen, and says something about Elizabeth’s age. Despite the regal attire, somehow Elizabeth is more fragile than the iconography.

Elizabeth and Philip Potent

Another unconventional portrait is Elizabeth and Philip Potent, created by Gilbert and George in 1981. Using postcards of Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh, the pair have managed to create a potent cross. More commonly found in heraldry, the term potent allows them to comment in a very playful and sophisticated way about the iconography and status of the royal family. In the show is also Gilbert and George’s postcard collage Coronation Cross, also from their 1981 Crusade exhibition. Crusade was intended to bring together art and a sense of national identity. The royal family was seen as very much central to that sense of nationhood.

This exhibition isn’t going to appeal to everyone, but if you read it as a social commentary I think it’s perhaps rather revealing. Pictures intended to shock seem somehow more commonplace when set against countless other portraits. I found myself more surprised by the intensity and size of Freud’s tiny portrait, than that of the endlessly reproduced Sex Pistol’s cover. I couldn’t help thinking about Queen Elizabeth’s namesake too, Queen Elizabeth I. Elizabeth I’s iconography was set out specifically to create and image of a strong queen, a goddess, a virgin, a ruler of lands, and we can see parallels with the early portraits of Elizabeth II. However, as technology has progressed, we are presented with an unprecedented number of pictures of the Queen on a near daily basis. The iconography of Elizabeth II still stands in those seminal portraits by Dorothy Wilding and the like in the show, but it’s actually those unguarded moments, like the morning of the Windsor Castle fire, which speak more loudly. In these unguarded moments, we see the vulnerability of the Queen, and ironically, it is where we identify with her that we perhaps gain a better understanding of her. Looking at each portrait as a tiny moment in time will offer a better reading of the exhibition, than trying to absorb the iconography as a whole.

The Queen | Art and Image is on at the National Portrait Gallery until the 21st October 2012.

This is a nothing to do with my food blog, but hey, it’s what I do ;0)

Have there ever been such hotly contested tickets as those for the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition, currently showing at the National Gallery in London? From 7:00 am the queues around the National Gallery begin to form, as those without a prized ticket scavenge for the 500 timed-entry tickets released at 10:00 am each morning. Tickets have been sold and bought on Ebay, and the more enterprising of us have paid entrepreneurial young American men to queue on our behalf!

Leonardo worked in Milan between 1482 and 1499, and this exhibition includes almost every surviving picture painted during this time. Among them are a few stellar paintings which have never been hung together before, including the two versions of The Virgin of the Rocks painted some twenty years apart. The premise of the show is to bring together, for the first time, the genus of work created by Leonardo whilst based at the court of Duke Lodovico Sforza.

This is also this is the first opportunity for art-lovers to see the recently re-discovered Salvator Mundi, one of only fifteen authenticated extant Leonardo da Vinci paintings.

Of particular interest to modern secular tastes, the portraits of the Lady with the Ermine, and the Belle Ferronnière are essential viewing. Much has been written about the Lady with the Ermine: it is believed to be the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, Ludoviko’s mistress, and painted in 1488–90. In placing the oversized ermine into the hands of Cecelia, Leonardo is making a number of puns; the Greek name for Ermine is Galay, a play on her name; and Ludoviko Sforza had been granted the Order of the Ermine by the King of Naples, and was known by the nickname, ’l’Ermellino’. Cecelia was sixteen at the time of the painting, and the Ermine emphasizes her youth and innocence. Leonardo wrote of Ermine as a symbol of purity and honour. Inversely, some readings put the ermine in her hands as a reference to her impending pregnancy with Ludoviko’s son.

By contrast La Belle Ferronnière is a much more enigmatic and idealised portrait. The sitter has not been identified conclusively, but may be Ludoviko’s wife, Beatrice d’Este or Lucrezia de Cribellis’, a mistress who bore Ludoviko two sons.

The painting’s current title was given to it during the 17th century and is thought to refer to the mistress of Francis I of France, who was married to a ferron (feronnier is the French word for an ironmonger). With paintings of this age, it is inevitable that some become associated with a number of different people.

In the exhibition the paintings are hung on adjacent walls, which creates the effect of the Belle Ferronnière gazing at the Lady with the Ermine, who in turn looks beyond the audience to a third point in the room. Cecilia engages with some unknown viewer, eyes turned slightly to the right as though in conversation. Her expression is open, as though listening with intent.

By contrast, the Belle Ferronnière is separated from us by the parapet, as though on a sculptural plinth. She is more distant, less attainable than the open Cecilia. The shape of her head shows a greater nod to the ideals of geometry and her clothing is richer than Cecilia’s, suggesting a woman of higher nobility. This is a rare opportunity for us to compare both portrait styles.

Other notable inclusions in the exhibition are the two versions of the Virgin of the Rocks. Given the scale of both paintings, they have been hung some distance apart. The painting to the left as you enter is the Louvre copy, and the first version of the subject, commissioned by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. On the opposite wall, the newly renovated National Gallery copy includes a number of Leonardo’s re-workings of the original theme.

The gesturing messenger of the first painting is here an angel, and the supplicant John the Baptist has gained his familiar attributes. The Virgin Mary is much more idealized than in the first version, da Vinci having had two decades in which to develop his style. The subjects are also crowned with their nimbi, at a time when artistic depictions of halos were diminishing. The confraternity may have requested da Vinci to emphasise their divinity in this version, particularly with reference to Mary’s birth without original sin. It is possible to sit on the benches between the paintings and play ‘spot the artistic difference’.

Visitors should also make time to see the unfinished St Jerome, the Maddonna Lia, the Madonna Litta and the cartoon of the Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist (also known as the Burlington House Cartoon). On show is also the Giampietrino reproduction of The Last Supper, done to a similar scale.

Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan – exhibiting until the 5th of February 2012

National Gallery

Trafalgar Square

London WC2N 5DN

The Queen | Art and Image

Leonardo da Vinci | Painter at the Court of Milan