National Gallery Page #16

while Martha makes herself very busy

going about all the chem,

and then comes to complain

that she's been left to do everything

and Mary isn't helping.

And Christ chides her and says...

says, "Martha, Martha, you're

concerned about so many things.

"But Mary's really taken the better path in...

"in allowing time

for her spiritual development."

And so we have to ask ourselves,

is this...

is this Martha and Mary in the foreground,

in contemporary guise?

With the old woman chiding,

that gesture, saying, "Hurry up."

Or is it maybe the worker preparing

the garlic mayonnaise,

so busy at work,

and the older, wiser woman reminding

her to allow time for her spiritual life?

There are the great words used often

in relation to this painting

of St Teresa of Avila.

"The Lord walks

even among the kitchen pots,

"helping you in matters

spiritual and material."

We have to go over

to conservation studio number two.

Keep it up! Back to base!

I'm no longer visiting,

because in fact I have the...

Moved on from

the great and the good...

Hello.

What a treat to be here,

without lots and lots of people,

which I suppose it's going to attract.

Yes, it must be a great attraction.

No, I'll take this.

Good to see you.

What, don't we get any wine?

We're guests.

It is very fun. I'm in London now.

John is around for a couple of weeks.

Well, I'm here for...

Lovely. Very good.

I can't believe we've never been here before.

Or I haven't.

I think my friend...

Ebony frames are,

of course, interesting.

World first. I want to explain where

I think the ripple moulding comes from.

These mouldings are called ripple

mouldings. This wave... wave pattern.

They're very interesting. They're really

the only ornament, frame ornament

that does not ultimately

come from antiquity.

It is sort of a non-classical ornament.

And I think it came about

because of the way the ebony is...

is... is... worked with.

Because, when you work with ebony,

it... it is not carved or planed

like other woods.

It is scraped with a scraper

at right angles to the wood.

Like...

Something like this, a metal...

a metal scraper that is...

scraped across the piece of wood

and lowered incrementally.

But the process of scraping is very...

the force is quite... is quite...

It is... the wood is very hard, and it's...

it is... it's quite difficult.

You only scrape a tiny bit off each time.

And in the process, there...

The whole apparatus

that you use tends to vibrate

and what you have is...

is a ripple effect on the straight moulding.

This was just done straight, and...

I'm not sure whether

you can see it in the light,

but you can certainly feel it.

There is a... a ripple that is voluntary.

That's a ripple that just happens

when you try to scrape it straight,

and then you have to sand it out

and straighten it out.

But I think that this type of ripple,

out of this accidental ripple...

And then this is done...

run over a track that goes up and down.

The knife goes up and down or the wood

goes up and down as it's scraped along.

And normally, I'm against illuminating

the way frames are made,

because it somehow

doesn't seem important.

If... if you go to a Rembrandt exhibition,

nobody's going to tell you

how the canvas is prepared

and the paints are... are made,

and all this technical bits.

But I find it interesting

with the ebony frame,

that I think it is... it is an accidental...

and a... and a discovery

from the making of the frame.

Yes, lovely.

Oh, it's 8:
45 already.

There's plenty of room for you all now.

And it's time for me to begin.

I'm talking about the strangely named

Triumph of Pan.

Poussin has reconstructed these really

recondite elements of ancient art.

That... that is one explanation for his...

his way of painting.

He may have thought

that painting in antiquity

was closer to sculpture,

precisely because

so much more sculpture had survived,

and he... he could only reconstruct

ancient painting in that way.

But it's curious...

So many of the things that attract him

about the ancient world

which he puts into this

strange, strange painting

are actually unnaturalistic.

So, he knows, for example,

that ancient statues of Pan,

as indeed is the case of figures in worship,

their faces were actually coated

with special substances

to make them seem more animated,

or just as a type of offering.

So the red colour,

it's very, very extraordinary.

But what makes it extraordinary, of course,

is actually that the rest of the sculpture

appears to be made of polished brass.

It means that Poussin's actually thought,

"Maybe, in antiquity,

"they did not patinate their sculptures."

And he was very, very learned

and in touch with all the most erudite

students of antiquity in his day.

Some of these things that I've been

mentioning aren't actually mentioned, even,

by modem art historical commentators

on this painting,

but they would be of great interest to...

and these subjects are of great interest,

the colouring of fem and so on,

to archaeologists today.

But I don't think it's quite adequate

as an explanation of this picture,

that Poussin has just become

that much more obsessed by the antique.

I think the clue

to the stylistic character of this work

lies in the fact that Poussin must have

known that he was painting pictures

which would hang beside

old paintings by Mantegna.

Mantegna and Poussin

are the two European artists

who are most interested in trying

to put something sculptural into painting.

And this becomes particularly interesting

in the context of this so-called "paregone",

the contest between the arts.

Tedious to us to try and work out whether

painting or sculpture is the greatest art.

But within that,

the structure of that argument,

people fought very intelligently about what

could painting do that sculpture couldn't do.

And you could always say of sculpture

that movement is frozen,

that space can't really be represented.

How odd, to find a painter

who's actually deliberately imitating

those precise qualities in sculpture

in their painting.

It's a kind of reversal of what

everyone else was doing.

And I think it's a reversal which he's done

for people who think about art

in a very, very sophisticated way,

people who like turning on its head

the priorities and values of other people,

as well as the people

who are not only learned,

but like to exhibit their learning.

In short, this picture is very, very elitist.

Making it accessible is quite hard work.

It's worth doing, of course.

But it's really hard work,

cos it was painted, I think,

not just as a subject which was

for very, very learned people,

who liked to be more learned

than other people, and show it,

but also, its style is painted

for an extremely sophisticated

and very... probably very small public.

I'm really thrilled we have it

in the National Gallery.

I personally don't know

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes