Original subtitles

BELLS RING

FLOOR POLISHER WHIRS

INDISTINCT CHATTER

- ..beautiful style of this picture... - Yeah.

Wow.

Mum.

Mum!

Let's go.

Ashley, let's go.

Right here...

We know but I think it's worth our trying to remember

that the Middle Ages were religious,

profoundly religious in a way that we can't really conceive nowadays.

I want you now to imagine if you can

that you are inside that church which you see as a model

and into which this altarpiece was once placed.

No big windows, obviously no electric light

but a space like this with very narrow windows.

The light would be filtering in.

You're not in the National Gallery, you're inside that church -

low light, maybe the sound of chanting,

maybe the sound of prayers being spoken slowly.

The smell of incense used to carry up the prayers of the faithful

to the heavenly realm,

and if you will now just imagine

that you are looking at this painting by the light of candles,

candles which flicker,

candles which would shine against the gold,

and you might think... Cos remember you can't read, you can't write,

the year is 1377, your houses are too hot in summer,

too cold in winter, death is part of the threnody of everyday life,

people are dying all the time,

you might think to yourself,

"If I'm good, I can perhaps get up to the kingdom everlasting

"where all is good, great and golden."

I think another thing might also happen -

by the flickering candlelight,

you might think that these figures were moving.

If they were moving, they were real and could hear your prayer

and intercede for you with Christ and the Virgin in heaven.

The painting would be acting as a sacramental channel

from earth to heaven,

and in a sense, that's how this painting worked.

I don't mean to make this sound as crude perhaps as I am

but if you will for a moment just imagine

that I've brought from my pocket

a picture of a sweet, grey, fluffy kitten

and I've pinned it here and I've said,

"Here are the darts. Aim for the eyes of the grey, fluffy kitten."

It's just a bit of paper

but in some way, you feel that you might,

in a peculiar way you can't quite explain,

be hurting some fluffy kitten somehow, somewhere.

I'm not suggesting to you that in the year 1377 or any time onwards,

people felt, "Oh!

"They're moving, they're real, they can hear me,"

but with the same kind of grey, fluffy kitten analogy,

I am suggesting to you that there is a very strong attachment

between a representation and the thing itself.

We're now in the National Gallery having a look quite quietly,

thinking about aesthetics and gold

and colours made from ground pigment,

but what we must remember is

how this was originally intended to be seen.

I've tried to pool together my first thoughts.

I don't mean this to be a criticism...

I don't know, I'm quite keen on criticism.

I'm also just trying to be very open here.

I think what comes out of it is that as an organisation,

I suppose that's probably a bit why I'm here,

our public voice is quite weakly represented

when we have forums together and we're talking about things.

I kind of tried to chunk that up this morning

of how does that manifest itself.

One is that just quite simply

I still find it quite amazing that we don't really talk much

about the public and the visitors,

but actually I don't think that when it comes to

a lot of what we talk about in some of our meetings

that actually are talking about communications out to the public,

we're not necessarily focusing on those 5.2 million people

and their needs as much as I think we could be and should be.

It would be good to think that we could foster a culture

where we focus a little bit more on what are our public needs

- and how are we meeting them. - Yeah.

I was thinking, my next little diagram -

this was all three o'clock in the morning,

rites of consciousness stuff -

I was thinking if we are the National Gallery

and we are talking about old masters at our heart

and we are a number of things -

we're conservation, research, preservation,

heritage all around the collection and education of it...

We are also a visitor attraction

and I know that word's horrid but we are also that.

If our mission is to make our old masters

more central to modern cultural life,

I think there needs to be more of that dialogue around the audience

as the centre as well. Still having art at the centre

but it's like another bubble that comes off

where we're looking at those audience needs and the conversations,

we'll talk about how are people reacting with us emotionally

in terms of their pleasure, in terms of intellectualism,

in terms of the academic side,

in terms of self-development spiritually...

Those kind of conversations can then help inform the decision-making

that we're doing in meetings like that Titian meeting yesterday.

Now, I thought that meeting yesterday was fantastic

and I think the outcome was absolutely right

but I think going forward,

it would be good if we could have more conversation about the audience

and what their needs are and what our communications need to reflect...

Going forward, alongside what we want to say about the art,

we also need to be thinking the end person

that's going to see our communications...

- Yeah. - What are their needs?

I've found some of the meetings that we have, particularly the, sort of...

You know, very large meetings

where perhaps a curator is standing up and talking about a subject -

it's fantastic but there needs to be the other dialogue

that goes on that then carries it on

so we're not just seeing it from what's our perspective

but what's the perspective of the people

that are actually going to see what we're trying to show them,

as it were, through our exhibitions and marketing and stuff.

My hope -

and if there's this opportunity to talk about one's vision going forward

with the trustees in June -

my hope is that we can make that dialogue more central

to what we're doing at exec and in some of our exhibition meetings.

On my side, I'm trying to imbue the marketing and PR side

with more of that stepping back

and actually looking at things from the audience point of view.

It's a question of balance.

I'm trying to get perhaps a more balanced view

where our processes enable us to look at the end users' needs

alongside the curatorial needs.

Well, I understand all this

and I would like to have some examples of where you've felt

we've failed or...

Because we haven't...

Erm, er...

Done this.

A lot of what we do is absolutely beautiful in terms of exhibitions,

lovely when it comes to the marketing,

we have beautiful imagery, absolutely gorgeous high-quality,

but I think because we're sometimes not going through that process

of thinking of it from the audience perspective,

we sometimes don't do that,

what's crudely called in marketing, a call to action.

We don't say this is the reason why you must come and see it.

Now, with something like Leonardo, it does it itself.

- It just does it itself. - Yeah. - Everybody wants to come and see it.

- And you could argue we should have done less... - No, no,

Leo isn't a good example. You've just got up that beautiful picture

and everybody wants to come and see it -

but other things, we need to actually make them come alive

in a different way because people don't get it immediately.

They don't understand what we offer.

It's part of that conversation we had a few days ago

about what does the National Gallery represent.

When you look at the research that we've done recently,

people loved the National Gallery

when they get here, and they understand it,

but to the average person on the street as it were,

they don't quite understand what we are and what we've got.

The fact that we've got these amazing paintings, they don't get it

cos we're quite discreet in how we tell them that.

You know, I do have some prejudices to overcome.

What I don't want is to end up with the gallery...

erm...

producing things to the lowest common denominator of public taste,

but I don't even want the average...

I mean, I'd rather have spectacular success followed by...

erm, er...

a sort of really interesting failure

than have, kind of, average.

In fact, I'm quite in favour of those things going up and down.

OK, thanks.

I'm going to try something a little bit new today

which is because the painting is rather more abstract

than most of the ones we talk about,

so we're going to have a bit of a go with some touch drawings.

I made a very simple sketch of the main structures of the picture

and then put it through this very exciting machine

that heats it up and then it all goes furry.

I don't know whether it's going to work for you

but I just thought it was worth a try

and that it might help some people get the overall structure

of the picture, which is not a narrative painting

or a painting with great detail.

The abstract shapes within it are quite useful to get a sense of.

Then we'll move on to a normal reproduction as well.

- I'll pass those around. - Thank you.

Raised image here.

One here.

Professor Whitestick, I'll be back in a minute.

Raised image here.

Today, we're talking about Camille Pissarro's Boulevard Montmartre At Night.

It was made in 1897, so just over 100 years ago.

Certainly, the viewpoint he takes -

which is a viewpoint from a hotel window,

high above, an aerial viewpoint of these streets -

adds to this sense of someone who is a little bit distant.

Whereas his colleagues would have a viewpoint like that

but include somehow a sense of themselves,

even if it was just a bit of balcony or whatever,

here you get no sense of the window frame, no sense of his presence.

The whole thing is viewed at a distance.

The particular painting we're looking at

is one of a whole series of 14 of the Boulevard Montmartre.

He went for these big campaigns, painting a lot of pictures at once,

trying to capture the changing light effect

so he might have several paintings on the go.

This is an exceptional one because it's the only night-time one.

His work's always a little bit dappled, you might say,

and full of little brushstrokes, but in this one,

nothing is very clear because it's dark and it's been raining.

All the things that can be seen are merged together

in this great watery pool of colour, light and shape.

What we're thinking about is the general structure of the picture.

We're thinking about it a bit like a flag.

You're seeing an aerial view of a street scene.

At the front of the picture is an upside-down V,

going in towards the middle.

It's a flag divided in to four triangles.

The bottom upside-down V triangle is the street,

it's basically a great whoosh of space leading towards

the point where all the triangles converge

which is exactly halfway down the picture.

The right-hand side is a V with its apex meeting the disappearing point

and then the left-hand side is a triangle along its left-hand side

and then the top is a real V

and that of course represents the sky.

Take both your hands and put them at the top of the picture

and then come down a bit.

If you go from the top corners and then down a little bit,

then move your hands inwards and downwards,

following the diagonals.

Can you feel the tops of the buildings?

I've only put the main forms in and above that is an empty space

which is a beautiful, deep, soft, smoky, dark bluey mauve

that dominates the painting. That's the sky.

Take that line of the tops of the buildings

and go to where the two lines meet.

Do you see that they meet at a sort of bubble where the lines converge?

Yes?

That's the disappearing point

and he punctuates that with a tiny little dot of light.

Overall, it's a really dark picture.

It's almost like a semi-transparent curtain's been drawn over the whole scene

and it's very much night-time,

and yet, it's punctuated all over the place by these flares of light.

They emphasise the structure

and give a sense of excitement of this city scene

which is a great characteristic of this picture.

Not surprisingly,

the furthest light of a great line of streetlights,

the furthest light is at the point where all these triangles converge.

It's almost like a sort of great symphony to light in darkness there.

There are all these people out there on the street.

I've read people trying to make something of this

being something to do with his anarchism as well.

Certainly, in the paintings where you can see more clearly,

the daylight pictures, he does make... He does ensure

that he defines the different people and their different social class.

You'll see people with top hats,

you see people who are selling things, you know, you see all sorts.

In this picture, you don't get that because it's all so ill-defined.

He is unlike many of his colleagues

in that he does show all strata of society.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

FOOTSTEPS

Remember to keep looking around you, always look around.

Be careful, guys, let's go nice and slowly.

Don't run, I don't want you to fall over.

It doesn't have a magic carpet next to it but it is the painting.

Please have a seat.

This is the story of Moses.

It's the story about how a little baby boy is sent down the river

and then picked up again,

given to the princess who gives it back to the mother.

He grows up to be an amazing and fantastic person.

Now, if you like the story of Moses,

you might like to see more stories about Moses

and there are lots of other stories about Moses in the National Gallery

but if you think to yourself,

"I've had it up to here with Moses, I'm sick of Moses.

I want to see somebody else,"

there's lots of other stories that you might want to learn about

in the National Gallery. There are people writing,

there are people eating and being surprised,

there are people... You might not believe this

but there's an old man over there who's being fed by ravens.

There's a raven, a little black bird that's giving him his food -

All these amazing stories in National Gallery paintings

for you to see.

This is a portrait which was commissioned by Henry

to fulfil another one of his demands, really, as I said,

to almost meet Christina by proxy through the medium of the portrait

so that he could decide whether he wanted to marry her.

Holbein is dispatched to Brussels in March 1538.

This is following the death of Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour,

and Henry is desperately trying to identify a suitable fourth wife.

Holbein arrives, Hans Holbein,

sent by the King of England to paint a portrait

on the understanding that if it satisfies the King,

she's then going to go over to London

and become the Queen of England.

Henry is said to have fallen in love with it

and to have been very, very keen to arrange the marriage...

but that doesn't happen.

There's an anecdotal statement - we don't know whether this is true -

that Christina herself said to the English envoy,

"If I had two heads,

"one should be at the disposal of the King of England."

It seems that she herself had a sense

that this wouldn't necessarily be a good match for her,

and ultimately, Henry gave up.

This is a very simple picture in its composition.

The frontal pose is very deliberate here

so that Henry could actually see exactly what she looked like -

no profile view that's hiding any blemishes or imperfections.

The use of light across the features again is very, very subtle

and carefully modulated so that there's a hint of an expression,

there's a hint of animation in her features.

She seems to be ever so subtly, wryly observing the artist

as she observes him.

I always feel looking at this painting, this portrait,

that this really is a young woman

fully in possession of her faculties, very intelligent,

squarely facing the world

and ready for anything that the world might throw at her.

I'll stop there and say thank you very much and goodbye.

How did Leonardo da Vinci start off with a blank panel

and a palette of oil paints

and create a painting of such sublime beauty?

If you just look at that flower in the corner there,

how did that happen?

It's this wonderful mixture of observation and imagination.

What was in the artist... What was Velazquez's intention

on painting Venus with her back to us

but with that bewitching look in the mirror?

And how did Stubbs achieve

such an anatomically accurate representation of a horse?

This painting is huge,

so physically, there must have been great challenges in painting it

but artistically, look at the detail,

look at the observation that the artist was able to represent.

What was in van Gogh's mind

when he painted this glorious vase of sunflowers

with its brilliant use of colour to convey mood?

Just look at the number of colours that are in this painting.

It's really yellow and green

but with this amazing blue stripe through it

and a blue frame to the vase.

How does that use of blue,

juxtaposed against that great splurge of yellow,

represent something in the artist's mind?

All of it really is about looking and about reflecting

and about learning ways to decode paintings

and understand what the artist's intention was.

However you look at a painting -

whether it's through a very art historical perspective

or whether it's through looking at its history

and how it came to be at the gallery,

or whether it's through looking at colour or form or composition -

this gallery provides you with wonderful opportunities

to explore the human condition.

We hope with Take One Picture

that it's not just about knowledge and learning,

that's one half of it. The other half of it

is finding your own creative response to the paintings,

finding ways in which these paintings have a relevance to you today.

I think many of you will go back in to your schools

and find a whole myriad of ways to give your pupils

the chance to do this very same exploration.

No, it's nice to see it up here.

I think that you should make a proposal...

- Treatment proposal? - ..that it be cleaned, yeah, yeah. - Oh.

- But for... Well, that's... - Just state that it would benefit

- from a good cleaning and restoration. - Mmm.

I'm bothered by all the retouching...

Up here, I'm bothered by all the retouching,

evident retouching, in the mantle of the Madonna, of the blue.

- Yeah, yeah, but it's... - But which is not nearly so but I do see that.

- Her mouth looks terrible. - I can also...

- Yeah. - Is this retouching or is it crazed varnish?

- Crazed varnish. - That's just crazed varnish.

- Similarly here around her mouth. - Yeah.

Actually, look, that's ground - that sort of honey colouring...

- He's dragged the lighter colour across... - Yeah. - ..there's a little orangey bit in there.

- That's ground, absolutely. - Yes, yes.

- Yep. - Mmm.

- Not retouching. - No.

This is the story of Samson and Delilah -

Old Testament story in which we are told how the Philistines

want to bring down the power of the Israelites

and in particular, to break Samson.

They are going to advance their secret weapon, Delilah,

and have her seduce Samson so that they can destroy the Israelites.

In a sense, you've got a spy story -

you've got the beautiful spy going off to sleep with the enemy.

In the biblical account, we're told how time after time,

she goes to his campaign tent all decked up and looking gorgeous,

trying to find out where his strength lies.

Time after time after time, he lies,

but his desire for her becomes so great that bit by bit,

visit after visit,

he finally tells her.

I want all of you to imagine that you are a spy

and that you have been sent

by your people, your tribe, your nation,

to be very nice and get secrets out of the enemy.

First of all, the enemy is the enemy

but after you've had a drink or two, a meal, chat with the enemy

and pretended to love the enemy,

you are beginning to feel differently towards the enemy.

What has been pretended..

might become real.

It messes with your mind.

I think Rubens, who is this painter of great psychological import,

has realised what's going on in the mind of Delilah.

She has pretended to and perhaps eventually come to feel love

and she has finally slept with Samson.

He has fallen asleep, this can happen...

LAUGHTER

She knows that this consummation of his desire

is going to lead directly to his death.

The Philistines are emerging through the open door there,

flames shining, reflecting on their armour.

We've got this hermetic sealant of curtain,

purple, rich purple curtain hanging,

the rich scarlet of her dress,

the gold of her cloak making this hot and rich.

Various light sources are adding to this, plus the covert haircut.

The candle is being held by this old woman

and very carefully, the barber is making his first incision.

We're not looking at a Delilah triumphant, she's not going,

"Yes, gotcha!" is she?

She's looking ambiguous.

She is bending tenderly over him with perhaps a look of dismay,

I'm not going to tell you what you think she's feeling,

we'll all read it differently, but her body is leaning away.

On the one hand, literally, on the left hand, there's a tender

gesture of hand on back, but the other hand is away from him.

It really is on the one hand and on the other.

She has, over the time that she has been trying to seduce Samson,

as any human being would,

gone through a series of mental transformations.

It must be very distressing now

to realise that the man that she has just had these relations with

is now going to die, directly,

as a consequence of her actions.

She has... And I'm hesitating to use this word.

She has betrayed him.

But then she must think to herself,

"But, no. I was working for my country.

"To have done otherwise would have been to betray my country."

It's about betrayal,

it's about notions of one's tribe, or people,

and about what, perhaps, might be

happening in the mind of anyone put into this kind of position.

But imagine, if you will, now,

going into the house of the Burgermeister

and seeing this above his fireplace.

And there you would be, with the Burgermeister,

with a rather large painting behind you

of Delilah with her breasts uncovered.

What would you say?

You have to view paintings,

or narrative paintings, as early films.

And as forms of entertainment.

So the artist has to decide at what point of the story

are they going...

Is he or she going to focus on?

So, again, when you come to your work,

when you've had all your different ideas, you have to sift through...

Which moment? What point?

What's the climax?

What, to you, is the most important thing you can communicate?

And how can you interpret that form of encounters,

experiences, or chance meetings, the best?

Paintings are very, very ambiguous.

You can look at them in one way,

you can interpret them in another.

And as your experiences change...

And I know, because I...come in here every day, paintings change.

And how you look at them changes as well.

Well, can we get straight on to and propose Sport Relief?

I don't see that the use of the portico for various purposes

is much different from the idea of projecting things

onto the front of the gallery,

which we've always resolutely objected to

on the grounds that it's a tremendous opportunity for us,

if we're doing something for the gallery.

I mean, there are various ways of looking at it,

but I think the right decision was

that we should not have people projecting things,

using our facade as a billboard, if you like,

because it diminishes the impact of any occasion

where we wish to do it.

But it also just looks as if we're up for sale, you know? Frankly.

I mean, I know there's an alternative way of looking at it,

which is that everyone gains publicity for the gallery,

but does it, actually, get the right type of publicity?

Right type of recognition?

This is the interesting question.

I'm inclined to say no.

Obviously, it's a very worthy

charity, but is it more worthy than 100 other charities?

One of the things we need to balance it, again,

is the profile aspect of it.

It is an opportunity for us, potentially,

to take a little bit more involvement, if you like,

in something that has the potential

to be broadcast to 18 million viewers.

And I think that's the balance, isn't it?

You know, is it...

Are we... Are we either happy not to align ourselves

with these chosen charities,

or do we think it's going to happen anyway?

Should we, perhaps, try and take a bit more ownership of it and...

Sorry, what's going to happen anyway?

Well, the event is going to happen anyway.

We weren't consulted about whether we wanted something

to obstruct access to the National Gallery.

We would never have said, "We want a marathon to end

"in front of the National Gallery."

Because a marathon... The end of a marathon

involves people on either side,

so you can't get into the National Gallery.

So, someone else has made the decision -

we're a great place for the end of a marathon.

That's... And now we're told it's going to happen anyway.

Well, I want to be involved in the decision as to whether

the National Gallery is the right place for ending a marathon.

And I'm not. Instead, someone else is making that decision -

"We're going to end the marathon in front of the National Gallery."

And then we're told, "Since it's going to happen anyway,

"and no-one will be able to get into the National Gallery,

"can we, in fact, have a marvellous photo opportunity to show that,

"in fact, the National Gallery is all about Sport Relief?"

I mean... And, also, you say, "chosen charities",

but who's going to choose them?

I do have a hell of a lot of requests for

the use of the National Gallery for charitable purposes.

One problem with this is also, you know,

the whole question of a charity -

erm, which we are -

using its facilities and everything, for another charity.

Which trustees would be very concerned about.

And, you know, it's always a worry of ours that...

You know, when people have asked if they can have charitable events

within the National Gallery, and we've always...

We don't do that, but we appear in the backdrop, with our banners,

like it or not.

And that's just part of the London...

That's part of that landmark.

So...

This race, I imagine, WILL end in Trafalgar Square.

Erm... And I...

You know, you can imagine the footage.

The filming of an individual running up towards Trafalgar Square,

to the north terrace...

We'll be in the backdrop.

I just feel that the National Gallery as a whole...

It closes the whole end of the square.

And all these events are going on, all these things are being planned,

without us being properly involved.

And all we say is, at the last minute, you know,

"Well, it's going to happen anyway, so can we just use it?"

Gill, you're...

Yes, and I think we should use this,

and Greg and I go back to Westminster,

and just use this as an example

of things that they have to talk to us about,

so we're much more joined up with them.

We need more notice on this.

So I think we should pick that up as an action point.

- If you support that. - I totally do, yes!

And it would be a good example to be able to quote.

Erm... I supported Julie when we first heard about this,

because I thought the exposure is fantastic,

and it is very populist, it actually gets us to 18 million people,

and it is therefore a good association.

And my only concern in this is that, obviously,

it is setting a precedent in terms of charities. So, it does,

in associating with charities, to a degree...

That was the only struggle I've had with it.

How to, then, actually say no to other organisations.

Whereas, before, we could be very cut and... Very cut-and-dry on it.

But, outside of that, if you're able to get round that,

or felt that we could associate with it, and it was a one-off,

and that we'd not do this as a habit, I think it could be quite doable.

I mean, I would've thought, at this relatively early stage,

we'd be at a point where, if we wanted to do it,

we could work with them. So we actually make it possible.

So if it's only a half-hour shot of an interview,

and maybe one can keep the portico open

by having people directed through a different way...

I mean, I think, if we believed in it, we could make it happen.

And could you articulate what you think the National Gallery

gets out of it?

I think it's an associa...

I think it's, actually, because we do appear rather on our pedestal,

physically and literally,

it's actually a way to be there and seem to be...part of common culture.

And Sport Relief has a massive following,

and is very much for the nation, as it were.

Therefore, it is associating with something that gives

a lot of pleasure to a lot of people, is how I would rationalise it.

But I accept it is quite difficult in setting precedents with charities.

We do get many, many requests.

I think what they're looking for is either a no,

or a yes, in principle.

If the answer is yes, in principle,

then we can - Gill and I, or whomever -

work to shape that so that,

if we think we then need to get more out of it, if you like,

we can be doing that.

Whether that's in terms of profile, or, actually, financially, as well.

OK, what about Chinese New Year?

Why shouldn't we be involved in that?

I mean, would you say yes to Chinese New Year?

Well, you don't have quite the same rationale

in terms of profile, do you?

It's a profile-raising thing.

It's different from other events that are happening,

simply because of the breadth of the reach you'd get.

Well, one criterion would be

how many millions are going to be actually watching it?

I think it would be dangerous to suggest

that we're going to be able to get a lot of coverage, per se.

But on the other hand,

if we feel that, as per our corporate objectives,

we want to be seen as more approachable

in the bank-positive sense,

it is one way of doing it, for half an hour, once a year.

- Mm. - So, you know, and if we said... - That's interesting.

- ..it's not something we... - That's a rather interesting one, Gill.

Half an hour every year... That's going to be one of our fences.

- Well, no... - No, no, no, seriously!

We might say we will consider one thing a year

that supports something that is loved by the nation

and compatible, and for everyone.

One could rationalise that.

And then we'd decide, if there wasn't an opportunity on certain years,

we wouldn't do it.

And we wouldn't do it if it causes a lot of disruption to our public.

But if there's something that's not going to,

and that we can work with Sport Relief

to make it minimum disruption to our visitors...

Let's talk about that, for a bit - the disruption.

Because we sat round this table and we were all sure

that we were going to work with Harry Potter, to make it work.

What actually happened was that, in fact,

the National Gallery was completely blocked,

and, in as much as it wasn't blocked,

people were just using the Sainsbury Wing

as a spectator-point in the gallery.

I think the gallery did probably make the right decision

about Harry Potter.

It was most unsatisfactory.

But, in fact, none of the sort of guarantees we were talking about,

erm,

actually,

could be effectively implemented at the time.

We're talking about a certain type of advertising.

And when you see a football match on television

and you see these huge signs -

they're all about, you know, running shoes and things.

I mean, there's some sort of a relationship.

They're not about Goya and... Picasso, even.

So, it seems to me the more disparity that there is

between the different types of public which we,

for one thing or another...

the more it actually looks as if one is just short of cash.

I mean, in other words... Or is in desperate need of publicity.

I mean, I just don't know.

I just don't see how it's seriously going to...

The name National Gallery can be announced a lot,

but what, in this context, would that do for us?

What does that tell people about what the National Gallery really is?

Secondly, you've got to continue with these negotiations, anyway.

One of the highlights of the gallery,

a painting that many people come along and see...

At some point in 1533, these two men, meeting as they did,

did what we might do were we to meet a fellow countrymen

in a foreign place - they had their picture taken.

Clearly, there's no handing a camera to a passer-by or a waiter.

The only way, until the advent of photography,

to have an image,

is to have a painter paint you.

They had money, they were wealthy,

they could pay for the best painter living in England

to capture their image,

and the top painter living and working in London in 1533

was the German painter

Hans Holbein.

And, at some point, the three men -

Hans Holbein, Jean de Dinteville, Georges de Selve -

would have got together and discussed this composition.

They're the ones telling the painter what to do.

Probably, Jean de Dinteville having the greater say,

because it was his painting -

he paid, it went back to his chateau in Polisy,

and it could well be that Hans Holbein had no idea

of the whole significance of everything he was being asked to make.

I have a colleague who thinks this is all about a murder that took place.

And I look at it, and I say but, "Where? What?"

And he says, "I'm not telling you,

you'll steal my idea and publish it."

So, none of us knows what it is,

but all we have is what we can go on.

And there is the lute case, the box -

the empty box, which perhaps reminds us of the coffin,

of death,

which is also alluded to here

by this distorted skull.

It's an example of anamorphosis.

You look at it full-on, from where you are -

it's unreadable.

But from where YOU are,

it reads as a skull.

And we don't know whose idea it was.

Did Holbein say,

"Your Excellencies, why not have an anamorphic skull?

"See, I have made one here."

And they thought, "Oh, that's good!

"That'll look really good back in the chateau at Polisy."

Or, had one of these two men heard about it and said,

"Master Holbein, can you fashion for us a cunning perspective?"

We don't know.

But all of you know,

that to put a skull,

which is a symbol of death

into a portrait, is a strange and unusual thing, perhaps.

Erm...certain symbols, certain objects are multivalent.

They carry manifold symbols.

But not the skull - the skull is always, is it not,

a symbol of death.

So, perhaps, the reading of this might be

that death is ever present.

Hiding...but ever present.

You never know when it might occur.

And, in fact, he didn't make old bones, at all.

But, perhaps, carried within this was a message

which Jean de Dinteville could talk about

when he showed anyone this painting in his house at Polisy.

Maybe the message was something like this -

No matter how rich, young...

He was 29, or in his 29th year. He in his 25th.

..handsome, interested in and worried about the world you are,

in the end, it all comes down to the grim invincible,

and the only thing to be considered in this world is salvation,

represented by the almost hidden crucifix top left.

It's the brilliant thing about art.

It encompasses everything.

It's not just about either drawing or painting - it's about life.

It's about music.

It's about film.

It's about philosophy.

It's about mathematics.

It's about science.

It's about literature.

Anything you are interested in...

..goes into art.

And that's why I became an artist.

And that's what fascinates me.

It doesn't matter what you're interested in,

it can all feed in.

And I want to also talk about how we can use

these paintings in the collection,

because it might seem to you - "Hang on a minute, we are

"looking at 17th century,

"16th century,

"19th century...

"What on earth use is that for us today,

"in the 21st century?"

Now, I don't make paintings -

I do a lot of drawing -

but I make installations.

So I make things that take over a room that people can interact with,

and yet these paintings here give me a huge amount of inspiration,

and I come in here almost every day.

So I want them to do that for you.

Now, I am going to be sort of blunt about this,

because it's important that you know this.

The collection is founded on slavery.

John Julius Angerstein, who had the nucleus of the collection,

worked for Lloyd's who were insurers against

slave votes.

And it's very important that people absolutely understand that

a lot of the institutions - whether you're talking Tate,

whether you're talking British Museum, erm -

a lot of the big institutions are founded from money.

And it's something, obviously, that should never be forgotten,

and should always be understood.

And also Britain's

very, very shameful part in that,

shouldn't, obviously, be forgotten, either.

Let's start first with Stubbs,

the great horse-painter.

You look at this portrait

of a horse, and it's hard to imagine

that this is painted by someone

that didn't really particularly train as an artist.

He was largely self-taught.

He established a career, first, as a portrait painter,

and as an anatomist.

He studied anatomy at York hospital,

and ended up drawing illustrations for a new book on midwifery -

or "midwife-ery" -

so he's already established himself as an artist in one way.

But, then, he set himself down for 18 months, in a farmhouse -

this was in 1756 -

and devoted that time - a year and a half -

to studying the anatomy of horses.

He was close to a tannery that took the hide's off of them,

and they gave him the corpses of these horses.

And he rigged up, in this farmhouse,

a great iron bar and pulley systems

and he would put planks of wood underneath the horses legs -

so that he would suspend them, literally, from hooks

on a ceiling like a piece of meat,

and then would start to go about drawing

all of the muscles that he could see, and the tendons,

and then he would scalpel away,

and lift away another layer of muscles

and draw what was underneath,

until he eventually got to the skeleton,

and then he would animate that.

He would draw and write notes.

So this was big news, what Stubbs was doing.

I'm very bad at maths.

I was bad at maths at your age, I'm bad at maths at my age,

I will always be bad maths, I think, though I'd like to change.

And the reason why I like art rather than maths,

although they are connected somehow,

is that in art you can be right in lots of different ways

but in maths can only really be right once. Otherwise you're wrong.

I do really like that about art.

And one reason why I wanted to show you this painting

is to talk about saints and things, but also to talk about storytelling,

because I think that's really, really important.

Think about the way that a painting,

whether it's this painting - this is by an artist called Bellini -

or it's Diana and Actaeon or it's Death of Actaeon,

which we're going to be seeing,

or it is Bacchus and Ariadne -

a painting has got to tell it's whole story in a single image.

A book or a poem has time.

The one thing that paintings don't have is time.

Do you know what I mean?

So a film unfolds over two hours.

You've got time to introduce characters,

you've got time to show the plot going in and out.

A book, a huge book, can take you six months to read -

or longer, can't it? Can do. Can do.

It means you're living with the story for six months.

And it goes in and out, it weaves around,

new characters are introduced, different things happen...

That's got time, too. But a painting doesn't have time.

A painting has the speed of light to tell you the story.

It has the time it takes to see the painting.

So telling a story in a painting is incredibly skilful.

So I want to think a little bit more,

before we move on to Titian, which we will do soon,

about how this artist tells the story.

What else is in the painting?

Can you think of a reason?

Because in the actual story

there's no woodcutters.

In the story, there's just St Peter Martyr and his assistant,

who you can see there escaping.

They're walking alongside a wood,

near Milan in northern Italy,

when they were set upon by assassins.

One assassin killed St Peter Martyr

and as St Peter Martyr was dying,

he wrote "I believe" in blood on the ground.

Now, he's not doing it in this one,

but there's another version of this scene in another gallery in London,

a place called the Courtauld Gallery,

where he is writing "I believe" in blood.

It's quite... It's quite gruesome, isn't it?

Quite a gruesome story. But quite moving, as well.

The other guy escapes.

No mention of woodcutters!

Totally irrelevant.

Why do you think he put them in?

And they take so much space!

The woodcutters and what they're involved with -

in other words, the wood - take up, like, most of the painting.

Why did he do that? Yeah?

Maybe because it gives the painting a little bit more character.

Definitely gives the painting more character. It totally does.

Think about this...

A tragic event, perhaps made more tragic,

if there are people around who don't recognise what's going on.

Who don't see it as a tragedy.

I'm trying to think of an example. I wonder if you...

You might know an example, I don't know.

It happens a lot in plays by Shakespeare, for example.

There are people that don't really know what's happening and go,

"Oh, what's happening over there?" There's, erm...

There's a lovely painting that's not actually in this gallery,

but it's a painting of the fall of Icarus.

Icarus is the one that made the wings...

The one who flew too close to the sun?

Fantastic painting, where almost all of the painting,

is people not noticing what's going on.

People, like, ploughing the fields and doing lots of other things,

while, in the background, he plunks into the ocean and dies.

And there's a famous poem about that by Auden,

which is a really good poem about how people don't really notice

these things happening.

I think these woodcutters are partly there to make it even more tragic,

because they just keep going on and on and on.

It's amazing, isn't it,

how it adds a sense of narrative

as soon as there's an object?

As soon as we've got this pole

we're suddenly seeing all sorts of paintings in the gallery where...

Suddenly there might be some sort of story woven into this pose.

We can't help ourselves, but to add narrative,

when we're dealing with the human body.

And if you want to include any elements from the room -

I'm thinking about vertical lines or horizontal lines.

Finding lines of connection.

Try to be constantly looking at the relationship

between the head and the shoulder girdle,

between the shoulder girdle and the pelvis.

Be brave and add that vertical line

to contrast the curves of the body.

OK, now we're slowing down and really looking.

Start to move more quickly around the body,

making marks in continuous movement

as you work around it with your eyes.

Leave a leg, move back to a shoulder,

go up to the top of the head,

move very freely around so you get a sense

of how this pose is working.

This hand should be big,

because it's going to hide that forearm.

Yes... It's the gap between it.

The gap between the nipple and first knuckle of the hand.

If you can draw that gap.

Then you'll be seeing...

- That's that line there, right? - Ah...

- That's the line of the crease of her elbow. - Yeah, yeah.

But I'm thinking about the actual bit of air

between the breast and fist.

- Hm. Yeah. That space is at the front of that. - Yeah.

It's trying to measure that space, really,

and place the hand.

So that it's like bookending, isn't it? The space in the middle.

- If that makes sense! - Easier said than done.

Yeah, get a hand in...

- I'm not sure... - You're wrestling with it?

Just draw it a few times on another piece of paper, and then come back.

Think about how you want to use your pencil.

You can work in cross-hatching to build up tone.

You can start to smudge chalk if you want to...

think about light and dark.

If you're using the chalks, you might want to switch.

If you've been using the black chalk,

maybe explore the red chalk, as well.

You get a much softer mark with the red chalk.

Black chalk is more sort of bound together.

See if that changes the way that you draw.

Just have another 30 seconds on this drawing.

So, if you're working your way around the figure,

just see if you want to, in some very brief strokes,

complete this pose.

SIRENS NEARBY

SIRENS NEARBY

INDISTINCT CHATTER

CHATTER AND LAUGHTER

He's gone to check to see how many they have left.

Even while the exhibition's been open,

have there been insights you've been getting into the work of Leonardo?

One of the things that you do as you start working on exhibition

is to think about what the whole narrative will be,

but you're also cataloguing each work individually, so at a certain

point it becomes a mosaic, perhaps, rather than a seamless narrative.

And obviously that remains the case to some degree.

But at the same time, you are beginning to see these works together.

You're beginning to be able to appreciate what makes them

very special as a viewing experience.

And I suppose what I've been struck about...

I suppose what I've been struck by over and over again

is this quality within these works

whereby the paintings show figures that are incredibly present,

incredibly vital, and yet extraordinarily remote and other,

and that's something that for me is very much a unifying factor.

So I suppose what I've been doing is seeing the works together,

thinking about what makes them a complete oeuvre by a single artist,

what makes them Leonardo,

and really, I suppose, I've been struck over and over again

by the quality of thought allied with a kind of pitch of emotion

and an intensity of craft.

And it's that really that seeing the pictures together has made me

understand about this extraordinary artist.

And have there been any insights, anything you've learned,

that have surprised you,

particularly since the work has been gathered here?

What I've been amazed by is how profound

and layered and endless the viewing experience is with Leonardo.

How you always feel that this is an artist who goes on giving

with each of the works, and in fact one of the ways I think you can

distinguish a Leonardo painting from one by a member of his workshop,

is this process of endless revelation,

whereby it's almost as if onion layers are being peeled away

and yet you never, ever quite get to the core.

Leonardo's capacity to paint the invisible,

the just out of reach, is really extraordinary,

and that has been the revelation,

but it is not about who painted what or anything of that kind.

It's really about the personality of the artist.

I think, for what it's worth, that it's this spiritual quality

in Leonardo's work that has raised this exhibition

to the event it's been, in the sense that it's not just about the name.

It's about something to do with the way in which these pictures

speak to people across time.

Leonardo created an archive of drawings

and they are about invention and observation,

and they're about looking and thinking and so on,

and he kept some of those.

And they go on being an extraordinary point of reference for each stage.

He is an artist who constantly refines,

who revisits certain themes over and over again.

And really, as I say, in doing that,

each of those works becomes ever more considered, ever more felt as well,

and that's the difference between him and his pupils.

It's really in his...

That's the difference between him and his pupils.

It's really in his pupils' work that you just don't see that.

You can see motifs being repeated, you can see beautiful craft,

but you don't see that exquisiteness of thought.

BRUSHING

TAPPING

OK, great, thanks. Great, thanks very much.

I've already taken some samples.

I took a couple to look at the varnish

because as you can probably see with a bit of an angle,

there is a varnish layer which shows up quite clearly

which doesn't come all the way to the edge.

- There's a drip of it that's running down here. - It stops there, does it?

So I've taken some to look at the varnish and then my other samples

mainly concentrate on this brown layer, which is the layer

that seems to have contracted and pooled and reticulated across the surface.

What's interesting I suppose from my point of view

is how that layer relates to the paint below,

and how it sits on the surface,

whether it's separated from the paint by anything in between,

and if we can see a bit more about the layer in cross-section,

whether it's got pigment in it,

so those types of things would be very interesting about a cross-section sample.

So given this varnish layer goes to the border,

- it would be perfectly all right... - We could take...

- ..to look at that border. - Exactly.

We need a place where there was damage, really.

I'm sort of looking up there in a way,

because although there's this large loss here,

that may not actually have that layer reaching that point,

but up there I think it probably does.

That might be worth looking at.

And I think the corners all have damages,

in the past from framing problems, that might be worth looking at.

But for the complete sequence of layers,

probably one's best confined to that part,

because as you say.

So let's take a little look up at the top.

I'll get the microscope out.

These damages here, probably be quite safe taking some here.

As a preliminary, that's the thing we want to look at, really.

I think that should do it actually.

But that's a very tiny bit just from the edge,

the inner side of the damage.

I don't think you can even see it actually.

makes it a bit easier for me to do my analysis.

OK, good, fantastic. Thanks very much.

I'll just note down where this comes from, I think.

I'll put it on this one.

OK, thanks.

- BACKGROUND: - Yeah, could be.

CHATTER

- A good workout. - A good workout, perfect!

Is it possible to buy the tickets online?

All the downstairs have completely sold out.

The only way to get tickets...

BEEPING

- That's OK. - It's OK? - Don't worry.

CONVERSATION IN GERMAN

The main challenge that we are dealing with is that

our income, and what's available to us to spend

is 3.2 million less next year than it was this year,

so it's a significant reduction

in what we have got available to us to spend.

Now of course, some of the income we had this year was exceptional,

from Leonardo, and our costs will go down as well next year,

so we're spending less on exhibitions than we were this year.

We are also spending less on our capital programme next year,

so 1.5 million down

because we're spending a million less on the capital

and half a million less on exhibitions.

Also this year, we've been able to afford the compensation payments

to a range of staff who have left, which was in the region of 700,000.

So all of those costs won't appear again next year,

but that still leaves us about a million short,

and the way that we have managed to break even for next year

is because of the savings we have made in staff costs.

So that has enabled us to present a balanced budget

so the work that we've done this year

and changes to invigilation arrangements

and in the post-SAP have been reduced,

has enabled us to balance this budget,

and there's a little bit more detail about that

later on in the paper which I will come to.

One of the big risks that we face over the coming years

is the likelihood of further cuts,

which although I'm hopeful that won't be the case during 2012-13,

it's not impossible tha there will be another spending review in 2012-13

which will reduce our grant and aid still further

in the following two years, 13-14 and 14-15,

which can be by as much as 5% each year,

and that's just what they've told us about.

Things have worsened considerably since the spending review.

Are we being too cautious on that front?

Only at 1.7 million of new income,

when the last couple of years they've gone way over that

and way over our budget figures.

Are we being too careful with that figure?

It's better to be cautious

because there are things that we don't know about.

For example, I've only budgeted in here for a 1% increase in staff costs

on the basis of the Autumn Statement.

Now we don't know what the payrolls will actually be.

And in recent years, they've actually been provided flexibility

that puts us under pressure to actually pay more,

and then there are uncertainties over energy costs,

which can be very volatile.

And there's the possibility of further cuts,

so I would prefer to budget cautiously

and know that we may well come in in a better position

which would provide us with the opportunity

to cover such eventualities if we need to.

Last year, this current year, we budgeted for 2.8 million,

and as of December, you were at 4.9 million,

not including 1.1 of campaign income,

so you were at six altogether.

And now you're budgeting for 1.7 million.

No-one's going to really look that closely

but it looks like we're spending 53p for every pound we raise.

With what we have in our budget, is our budget really realistic then?

It's cautious, but is it realistic when we're raising twice

what we put in here historically.

This is reflecting what we would expect to bring in.

You're right, it's very cautious,

but it enables us to balance a budget

that has accommodated the costs that we consider to be reasonable

to do what we want to do next year,

and it provides us with some flexibility

to cover eventualities that we can't predict,

and also new projects that might come up during the course of the year.

So we could include more income,

but then we'd be including a much bigger contingency,

which I'm not sure it's a brilliant message.

Here is the decline of the empire.

Here something terrible has occured, it's the end of Carthage.

Their overthrow by Rome.

The men are all being taken off prisoners to Rome,

the women are weeping for them.

Here, the sun is descending, I think, in the sky.

It's a very dramatic sunset with quite a lot of red in it.

Turner himself referred to it as "an insanguined sunset,"

an insanguined sky,

and here these rough brush marks in a dark red,

I think if you go into the exhibition,

you will see it is a dark browny red,

almost perhaps like eccrusted blood.

So this is a very dramatic view of empire.

So here, I think,

Turner really starts to detach himself from Claude in many ways,

because these are not tranquil depictions of classical subjects.

These are reflections on history,

and Turner was immensely interested in and influenced by history.

He also wrote poetry on this subject.

And he can't have avoided, of course,

the events around the painting of these compositions

in 1815 and this one in 1817.

It was of course the very end of the Napoleonic Wars,

the end of the Napoleonic Empire,

and by contrast, the rise of the British Empire.

But Turner took a very long view of these things.

He was interested in the rise and fall of empires

over hundreds and thousands of years.

Do come in.

So, welcome.

Now, you're looking at a picture of Frederick Rihel, painted in 1663.

It came in to the National Gallery in 1960.

It had been quite obscured by lots of accumulated yellow varnishes.

The picture was restored not that long ago

but the varnish that was used was very, very degraded.

What you're seeing now is a picture where I've done

quite a lot of cleaning,

and that means using solvents to reduce or remove

discoloured varnishes from the paint.

Over most of the surface area,

there is an area roughly corresponding to here,

where I haven't cleaned, not yet.

It's a little hard to see the differences, I suppose now,

and I can tell you it looks much worse.

I think the interesting thing about a yellow varnish,

everyone understands that a yellow varnish shifts all the colours

toward the warmer end of the spectrum - blue becomes green,

and a yellow film over a yellow colour

doesn't change it much at all.

And so you might wonder about a picture like this,

which is mostly warm colours - white, red, brown, yellow -

about the distortion.

There are two things I would point out that have changed quite a lot,

and you can distinguish some quite important things

that are going on in the picture.

The differences between the yellow and white impasto,

very typical of Rembrandt, was completely impossible to see.

The sleeve and the sash were more or less the same colour,

but the other important thing to think about

while we clean pictures, that people often underestimate,

is the fact that varnishes not only change colour,

they often go a little foggy.

They develop a fine crackle and the scatter light,

and it's really on a microscopic level,

like looking at the shattered windscreen on a car.

There's still a film there but you can't really see through it,

and that really changes the way you see the darker colours.

So they become much lighter,

and so you can't see the distinctions that are in

the painting between, say, quite dark, very dark and extremely dark,

and that's really important with the picture like this is

where there's so much going on.

It's about distinctions between brown and black,

and really the illusion of depth and volume

and spatial perception is the key gain from this picture.

I think the kind of investigation I was saying before that we do

as part of any restoration, even preliminary to any restoration,

has shown some other interesting things about this painting,

and I'm going to take my one visual aid here.

We...

Sorry about that.

We normally do X-radiographs of pictures like this

before we start restoration,

so here is a typical X-ray where you can see the denser pigments,

the ones with the heavier atomic weights, show up white,

and luckily it just so happens that lead white, white pigment,

is actually one of the heaviest pigments,

so you can see the distribution of some of these things,

and it tells you very important information about how a picture's planned.

For example, the sky is painted around the head,

the head isn't on top of it, because we don't see that going through.

You learn all kinds of interesting things that are often very revealing

about a particular painter's way of working, certain mannerisms

in how he might handle impasto and all the rest,

but the fascinating thing about this picture, which many of you

may have already worked out, is that if you turn it sideways,

there is another picture,

and this is very unusual for this kind of picture.

Rembrandt did this a great deal.

Something like a quarter of his self portraits

are recycled and reused,

but it's very unusual in the context of an important commission.

This is not painting for the marketplace.

This picture was for a rather important client.

So we can't be absolutely certain about this underlying painting.

I think it's fair to say it's the same sort of body type

and general characteristics as Frederick Rihel,

so you might say that he may have changed it in response to this event

that happened, is one theory.

This is in itself is quite a bold and very unusual composition.

There are more or less no full-length portraits

after his experiences with the reception of The Night Watch.

So that in itself is unusual and to have this great empty space

with what look like trees and the rest coming through

is quite fascinating.

But for whatever reason of which we can't be certain,

this picture, which is probably not entirely finished

but very far along, was changed.

And then we get into some interesting things

about what happened when it was changed.

He, amazingly enough, just turned it sideways and started again.

There was no priming in between the two paintings.

There is a brown quartz, sandy brown,

very typical of late Rembrandt, underneath the first composition,

but he just turned it and started on the same campus,

as best we can tell.

And away he went.

And it's interesting to think about that

because oil paint becomes more transparent

naturally over the centuries, slightly more transparent,

and so that's why you can often see pentimenti changes

that were not intended to be seen.

Everyone thinks about the horse's legs on Velazquez,

when you see three or four of them because he was adjusting it

and you see them coming through.

And there's a fair bit of that happening in this picture.

I know the light's a little low in the evening, but here for example,

is the hat of the standing man and his face is here,

so you can see a little bit of the pink showing through,

and there are some odd shapes coming through the horse's belly,

and they have to do with the underlying composition.

Now we're getting into interesting problems of restoration history,

because as I said,

what you're seeing now is a picture that is largely cleaned,

at least in the first sense of the varnish coming off,

so you can see the kind of damages that are very typical of a picture.

The picture's in a pretty good state for its size and its age.

There are certain losses that, who knows what the reasons are,

but there are other problems with this picture that I think result

from previous restorers' confusion about what was going on.

It's important to remember that before the mid-19th century,

the kind of materials available to restorers to thin or remove varnishes was fairly limited.

They were fairly blunt instruments

and you couldn't really have the distillation of organic solvents

that you could know their reactions and really predict and understand the chemistry.

So there was often issues with overcleaning,

and I think what may have happened here is if you think about Rembrandt

and his characteristic accents of very thick impasto

that create this wonderful relief,

there was a bit of that going on from the underlying composition,

and I imagine if you're cleaning brown varnish off a brown painting

and you suddenly start to see some very exciting impasto,

it's Rembrandt,

it can be quite exciting,

and we can't be absolutely certain, but for example,

this ornament on the boot -

I think I've asked you about this before, haven't I? -

it's unlike any...

He's basically waving a fancy dress hunting outfit,

very typical militia party gear,

with a vaguely martial idea,

and so this boot is along those lines too,

and it has this odd ornament of a type that I've never seen anywhere else,

and if you then refer back to this X-ray, let's see.

Let's see, where am I? Hello.

There we go.

This thing on his boot is actually the top of this,

he is wearing a kind of tabard, jerkin, kind of hunting, riding...

Funnily enough, he seems to be in riding gear,

the standing figure as well.

Maybe just a sort of country squire look.

But that's a detail of his underlying costume.

It could be that Rembrandt just fortuitously thought,

"That's rather good, I'll use that,"

but it does seem a little odd to me because it's this perfect triangle,

it doesn't really curve,

and the whole idea about this picture is

wih a very limited palette he has created this amazing thing

of the horse coming out on the diagonal.

Even the boot is twisting out and coming up,

and if you think the thing should probably be

about a metre and a half higher, it was really looking down in the way

that equestrian portraits of this type are supposed to create

this kind of grandeur.

Authority if not power.

Think of the Velazquez Olivares or something like that,

so this doesn't seem to square with that to me.

But we'll be looking at that very closely.

We'll take a look with a microscope and take some samples and see.

It looks to me as though you can see some traces of this

mouse-coloured, brown-grey paint,

within the impasto of the boot ornament,

which suggests to me that this is an earlier misguided cleaning.

That's something quite different from, say, the natural increase in transparency.

There is other evidence of very harsh cleaning in this picture anyway.

This kind of broken-up islands look a bit like, I don't know,

fractoids or a sort of steamy-looking thing,

and that's a very typical result of undercutting

with harsh solvents or reagents, so this picture has suffered a bit

and I think there was much more confusion on the lower areas

where there's a sort of brown on brown and brown

and it's a little confusing if you're not really aware of what's happening.

In what sense does the work that you do feed into the exhibition -

beyond the fact that it made the restoration possible?

In order to conserve a picture,

you have to understand the materials of which it's made,

how it's painted, what its condition is and most of all,

how it's going to behave towards any proposed conservation treatment.

What that means is that

we can only touch a picture if we can do it safely.

One of the reasons why pictures are investigated

so carefully for their physical and chemical state

is for the scientists of the gallery to be able to advise restorers

on the kind of conservation treatment they intend to use on the picture

and most of all, so that we can guarantee that

what is done to a National Gallery picture is absolutely safe for it.

How has our understanding of Leonardo changed now -

I mean, having got to the end of this exhibition?

Well, there are in fact very few paintings by Leonardo extant

that have come down to us.

And so, the study - the intense study of one of them -

the National Gallery's Virgin Of The Rocks

provided the most complete information

about Leonardo's painting technique.

We know quite a lot about the way he drew on paper,

but before this exhibition and before the studies were undertaken,

quite little was known about the actual way in which Leonardo painted.

- And now we know a great deal more. - And what is it that we know?

Well, er, that's... LAUGHTER

We know every detail of this picture.

It's one of the most intensively studied pictures

in the National Gallery collection.

So we know how Leonardo prepared his panel,

what kind of ground he used.

We know that there were two phases of drawing on this picture.

In fact, it went through a radical transformation,

from an earlier design to the design that you now see

expressed in paint on the surface.

And what that means, in fact...

Because of that transformation of design, it means this picture

is actually very complicated and its manner of painting.

So we've been able to analyse what we'd call

the layer structure of the picture -

all the different layers of paint that Leonardo applied

in working towards the first composition

and then his second, finished composition.

We also know, in doing that, a great deal about the materials.

For example, the pigments he used,

the binding media he used and so on.

So we can provide a very complete description of how

this work of art was created.

Right, that's the power fixed.

- I'm going to work it down from there, all right? - All right.

What did we not know before?

When you plan the exhibitions,

you think about the different works that you want to bring together.

You go and look at them, of course,

and you're very familiar with every individual work,

but you never actually see them together -

and that is the magic of any exhibition -

that if it works, there's a magic that all of a sudden happens

when works start talking to each other.

Sometimes, it doesn't happen.

Then you know that you failed as a curator.

But when you see that it does happen...

There are relationships

that all of a sudden start to become more evident.

There are new themes that you discover,

even during the exhibition.

You spend so much time preparing for an exhibition,

writing a catalogue, thinking about each individual work in detail,

but it is only when you see them together in the same room

that things start to become apparent.

So, for us, over the last three months,

living with these works together in one space,

we have learned a great deal

about how Leonardo really developed as a painter,

how his students were responding to him in Milan -

how others did not really respond to him

and just continued to do what they were doing before -

how he was working with his workshop,

how he collaborated with his students.

There are still very many open questions and I think we have also

learned a great deal about the two versions of the Virgin Of The Rocks.

And still, it is a bit of a puzzle.

Art historians have thought about it for, I believe,

over 100 years and they've tried to work out the chronology

and the relationship between these two paintings.

A commission that is very well-documented, but yet,

we don't quite know why there are two pictures

and who painted them and when.

Originally, it was only men who were allowed to model.

Early Renaissance, artists were drawing from men only

and then having to sort of adapt those drawings

for the women in their paintings.

It was definitely a male profession, because women would be seen as...

- Prostitutes? - Yeah, it just wasn't the sort of thing

women could be seen to be doing.

It is always a big decision, isn't it, when you're making a drawing?

You have to go for it, because if you skirt around it,

- you end up with a very strange figure. - It's there, isn't it?

It's there. It's just part of everything...

But, yeah, you're right - you don't see...

In the gallery, I can't think of any examples.

I think it's a very...

..healthy thing to have, life drawing.

Yeah, it's liberating, isn't it?

I've never done it, but if I'd done it when I was younger,

- it would have changed my outlook... - Yeah, it just reminds you that...

It's free, isn't it? You see it for what it is.

Exactly, it's just sort of stripped of everything

and it's this sort of safe environment as well, isn't it?

- It's an encoded environment, where... - There's no giggling. - Yeah.

- But it's just celebrating how beautiful it is... - How we are.

..and how beautiful we are, yeah.

It's a really good thing to just focus on and as you say,

it changes your...

Joe, are you going to stay there? Put the lights...

Put the lights carefully, yeah?

CROWD HECKLES

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

It's this question of what's the water doing?

If you could just nail what the role of the water is...

We're saying here

how he's doing the theme that we've already talked about -

and that'll be about endings and um...

OK, just help me with one thing. Help me with one thing.

Um...

- Cuyp, let's say... - Yeah?

..has cows, tree, grass, light.

If Cuyp's work...

Is Cuyp's work a metaphor, or just a cute picture of a cow and grass?

- No. - OK... - Nor is this. We're just saying it is.

What I'm getting at is, basically, if that weren't water...

- If that was a field... - How is the water metaphorical, you're saying?

- How does it help him generate metaphor? - OK...

- Do you see what I mean? - Yeah, let me do it then.

I can see what you mean, I'm now going to do it.

- Are these your glasses? - No.

They're mine. They're mine, thanks.

OK, got it.

Action.

The Fighting Temeraire.

How different the mood would be if it weren't for the accent of...

Hang on...

Still set.

Action.

The Fighting Temeraire.

How different the mood would be,

if it weren't for the accent of that black buoy.

But how exactly Turner gets the balance between the two blacks -

the buoy and the tug -

with that precise sense of space between them,

the massive heavy treatments of the sunset and the subtle globe beneath.

It's very hard to say where light meets darkness,

so subtle is the grade.

How he gets all those things

is the essence of the success of the picture.

Water becomes a metaphor for feeling,

for yearning, the sense of loss -

the depth of emotion that his subject is about.

A metaphor is a literary thing that comes from the mind,

but the painting is made powerful by what's actually in it.

The precise shapes of those sails,

with the light shining on them.

And then, their repeat in the sliver of light by the black buoy -

and then the wonderful, lively fullness of that sunset

and the placid shimmer of the blue cityscape on the horizon.

It's through the doing and the redoing of all those

calling and answering elements

that Turner makes light on the Thames

into such a tremendous metaphor.

OK, that will work.

No handholds this time.

- That's it. - Yeah.

There you go, same again.

I'll have to get one. One second.

CRANE MACHINERY WHIRS

120.

Go all the way up.

OK, good. Obviously, it's not a problem, because of that shadow.

That's right.

How about the right wing?

Dead on.

Would these have adjusted down on auto?

- The new fittings that you've added... - Are the levels strong?

..will stay at 100%, but the other fittings that were

in the room previously will have dropped, possibly.

Maybe what we should do is close the blinds again

and set everything back to...

the full output level.

- But these should be at 100? - Exactly, yes.

- Darren? - Yeah?

Come back to the light on the centre panel.

Can you see enough from up there to see what's happening?

- Yup. - We've got a huge frame shadow.

I don't think there's going to be anything we can do about that.

It's because the frames are causing it

to sit behind the glass so far back.

But...

do you have your card handy?

Put your card over the first fixture.

Take it away.

Again.

Take it away.

Take it away.

Tweak that one up a wee bit, too.

There you go.

OK, move along to the next.

Take it away.

Again.

Take it away.

Let me... Let my eyes adjust a moment.

I forgot my sunglasses this morning. I always bring my sunglasses up.

Kevin?

So that's 150 at the top.

Ah, there, we're getting more in line now, good.

Good.

Let's check the centre panel again, because we've added this light.

140.

And now, the left wing.

It's a shame about the shadow but I'm afraid there's just nothing...

- We'll have to live with it. - ..not without...

backing it uncomfortably.

- Well, there's no more room, is there? - There really isn't.

You've been heroic. With the exception of the shadow...

It's a lot better than I thought it was going to be.

- So thank you guys very much. - No problem.

RADIO CRACKLES

I'll take you to an extreme example.

We were discussing natural light

and how now no-one knows where the lighting is in the painting.

Like, where is this one lit from?

- I think from the... - Top left, yeah.

And it's a fact that in the 17th century,

we know people were much more aware...

When Van Doort wrote the inventory for Charles I,

he recorded every painting and said

whether it was lit from the left or the right -

which you just don't even do now, this we're so used to electric light

- coming down and doing it all for us, we don't realise... - Right.

..it's important to record how it was.

And I assume he did it because he was going to

- hang the paintings according to which way they were lit. - Yeah.

This one's in a big church and you could probably find, actually,

which chapel it was,

sit there and see where the light was during the day,

how it worked, why it was the optimum time for it to be viewed.

So he probably never imagined that it would be shown

in this kind of context, with electric lighting and...

Now, that's something that you have got to address, in a sense.

And we don't address it.

We say everything's designed to be seen dead front on, evenly lit.

I can give you one, because we're nearby...

We have to go to Rubens' gallery first.

I'll show you an extreme example of that.

OK, this is exceptional, because we know where this painting was

and it still exists, the actual venue that it was in -

it was in Rockox's own house and it was above his chimneypiece.

And chimneys in the 17th century

weren't like these little miserable things we get now.

The height of a chimney is always about here.

That's the top ledge of it, so it would have been at least that high.

You've got to imagine you're going to have to look down on the...

You know, the painting is way above you and you're looking up.

You can actually walk into chimneys in the 17th century

and you can guess, the lighting's on the left, OK?

That's where the windows were. The windows were quite high, too.

Now, it has one immediate effect,

which you don't get now, when you light it evenly.

The lighting is stronger on the left,

because that's the source of the natural light.

And therefore, it picks up her very strongly

and the five figures in the doorway look very faint

and that's worth noticing, because you wouldn't expect that.

In this light, the look almost as if they're competing spatially

and they're very bright, you know? The guys coming in to arrest him.

But when you actually put it in its original place -

and we did this a couple of years ago -

switch off all the electric lights,

which always takes a bit of persuading to do.

You'll find the painting clicks and pops,

because those guys fade back into the distance and this stuff,

which almost looks too harsh...

Because the light's stronger, it becomes much smoother.

He must have known he was doing that, cos he's made the contrast...

See the browns sneaking through, between the white?

You can see the warm browns.

So he's made it to catch the light and so, this is the focal point.

Would he have painted it in the same light

- as it would have been displayed? - Yeah, he probably painted in situ.

And, there's quite a lot of evidence that artists did go

and place paintings in situ. Rockox was a friend of his.

And if not, he would have touched it up -

and that brings you to a different problem -

what happens if you've used tinted varnishes,

which we know existed from Pliny's time, in antiquity?

Because he would have thought, "Oh, that bit's now too bright."

And if we clean them off, we think we're very scientific.

We strip all the varnish off and so, we destroy any of that evidence.

Even when we find an original varnish,

we tend to get very excited and take them off.

And so, we'll never know how much the artist toned it back.

But you can see in this painting...

I think the painting's much finer over here. If you come here...

See, he's just done zigzags -

hasn't bothered to do any real modelling at all,

because he knows this is the dark corner.

And he also knows it's above your eye height.

And so, you see these differences...

And he also knows the window lets in the breeze,

- so he's made the candle blow from the left. - That's quite clever.

And so, you lose all that.

I mean, context is almost crucial for a painting like this.

And you read a lot of rubbish, because people say

"it's above a fireplace", or "it's the flickering firelight".

If you actually look at a firelight, it doesn't reflect back.

The thing that light reflects off is floor, and so...

I mean, if this was a palace, for instance -

and we can try it when we go to a banqueting hall -

and switch off all the lights - how much light do you get

from the windows bouncing off the floor and illuminating the ceiling?

You can test it.

The only place I know it really works well is Palazzo Barberini.

- Anyway, thank you very much. - Yes. - See you. - See you.

HAMMERING

The Titian cuts across...here.

- OK. - So this would be one wall.

- Right, I get it. - So it's within that... Within that space.

So it's not a very big...

And how far do you have to be from the paintings?

- What would be the... - The barrier, there. - The barrier.

That's just the barrier. And what is the barrier?

It can be up for grabs, but it would be like a...

Probably like a rope thing.

I think it's fine, space-wise.

- I don't think it's a problem. What's the floor like? - Um...

It is concrete with wood over the top,

but maybe you could put some vinyl or something?

- Well... - It's this, actually. - Shall we just have a look at the floor?

It's concrete underneath. It's oak, I think, over concrete.

I mean, I think we just have to look at what we want

the visual aesthetic thing to be, in front of the Titians.

I just think if you put a floor intervention on there,

it might look a little bit artificial.

And actually... I mean, if it was an Ed person,

you could ask him if he would dance on that, as a question. Or Carlos.

- You know, as a question - would you mind...? - Dancing on that?

Yeah, and they would have a point of view and one more perspective.

- So I think the question would have to be asked. - Yeah, OK.

I don't think it will be a problem, because it's not like

- they're going to be doing massive jumps and leaps... - Even Carlos.

Not in here, no. Not even Carlos.

But I think...a line is no use.

- It's no use? - So you'd have to build a floor which is sprung, and then

- you get into a whole other... - That would be... - ..kind of dynamic.

I think, coming into a gallery to dance in front of the Titians -

that's what the nature of the event is,

- so one has to find what would be the most appropriate thing. - OK.

So, good morning everybody

and thank you so much for coming this morning.

Titian called these works something special -

he called them "poems" - "poesie" -

and that was the first time that an artist had referred to his works

in a way comparing himself to...

..the intellectual capacity of poets -

poets of the ancient times.

And of course, Titian's favourite poet,

who he was very familiar with and was able to read

in the many wonderful vernacular translations

that were circulating that time,

was Ovid -

who, of course, was a Roman poet

and who wrote the wonderful Metamorphoses.

Ovid told these tales of the gods from the Greek pantheon

with such a mixture of humour and levity and...

..at the same time, acknowledging the tragic elements of human beings

tangled up in the loves and affairs of the gods.

And it was these subjects that Titian chose to send to Philip

and I now just want to look at the picture

and see all the different tools that Titian has used

to bring the story to life and to make us really feel...

..all sorts of different, conflicting emotions,

just as Ovid did.

And I think the reason that Titian loved Ovid so much

was that he was tragi-comic, yes,

but he was also a poet that really used words

in a very, very visual way,

whereas Titian was a painter

who could conjure up poetry visually -

and that's why, in this famous letter to Philip,

he called these works "poems".

And I think that as we sit there

and feel that lyrical quality emanating forth

that we can understand why that was

and why they're still called "poesie", to this day.

Today's ten minute talk is on Michelangelo's Entombment -

this large painting behind me.

This is quite an extraordinary example of the National Gallery's collection.

I don't know if any of you were looking at it

and thought that it looked a bit odd.

There are some really quite unusual features in this painting.

It's perhaps not the most typical way, for example,

to represent the subject. And also...

Well, I suppose what I most notice about it is its unfinished state.

That's quite a curious aspect of what's going on.

I don't know what you think, but for me, it's really great to have

mysteries and questions hanging over paintings that are 500 years old.

Because sometimes, we tend to look at them and think

because they're 500 years old,

we know everything there is to know about them.

And of course, that's not the case and every single one of us

as an individual brings a different story to a painting like this

and sees something different.

I absolutely do is see someone texting on a mobile phone.

Of course, that's probably not what everyone else sees at all,

but that's actually what can help keep these paintings alive for us -

the mystery around what the artist had intended,

because it's not always completely obvious.

I'm going to stop there. If you do want to ask questions, please do.

Something all artists are interested in is how

painting can kind of freeze reality.

So, someone who died a long time ago is still here, looking at us.

This lobster, which existed a long time ago,

which now doesn't exist at all, of course - is here, preserved.

Amazing preservation and here it is.

The drinking horn still exists.

It's probably the only thing in the painting, I imagine,

that does still exist.

But it's that idea of something being ephemeral,

something like a lemon.

And artists were really intrigued by the idea that they could do that -

preserve something for ever, really.

Well, it won't last for ever, but it'll last longer than us,

barring some disaster.

And that's an interesting idea.

I'll tell you a joke about Moses.

He goes up... This is not true.

He goes up onto the mountain, comes down with the Ten Commandments

and he gathers the Israelites around him.

He says, "OK guys, I've been up there, I've had a word with him.

"Do you want the good news, or the bad news?"

And they say, "Good news."

"Good news is, I've got him down to ten.

"The bad news is that adultery is still on the list."

LAUGHTER

Anyway...

This painting got vandalised a couple of months ago.

Some crazy guy came in with a red aerosol.

Luckily, they got the restoration team in straight away,

took it down, took it away, worked all night -

- and I came in the next morning and it was... - It was back up?

- That's really nice. - Yeah, it was back up, cleaned up, perfect.

Sadly, these things happen from time to time,

but you just have to learn to live with it.

Now, let me show you the last Claude,

because there's a nice little story attached to this one.

To come back to that research on Watteau was fundamental.

Bringing the works together was also an important element.

Now, we will see from what will come out of the...

Study of the partition -

I have ordered a big electronic copy of the partition

and we have sent it to William Christie, who believes -

and I think all the scholars - believe that, Watteau,

represented very accurately every musical movement, so it's not...

Well, we've consulted a number of musicologists ourselves

and the consensus now is that that is not a real piece of music.

- OK. - It's not a real piece of music.

Probably an energetic restorer!

Well, yeah, whatever.

I mean, I haven't compared the music

and the painting with the music in the print line by line...

- I was going to ask... - ..it's something I must do.

But I'm told that it's not a guitar piece,

because you would expect a number of chords.

It's not a singing piece,

because there are no words, other than what appear to be

the remains of a title,

so we can't actually make out what that is.

It's impossible to read and we've looked at that quite carefully.

So, if it's not a guitar piece and it's not a singing part...

I mean, what is it?

We conclude that it might be...

The only possibility is that it is music for the guitar

and that she is rather awkwardly holding it like this,

so he can actually see what he's playing.

But in fact, it's not plain.

So that was another...

So he's just chording his guitar, do you think?

- Tuning, yeah. - Tuning, sorry.

- Or is he playing, because... - He could be...

I don't know, he could be about to...tap it.

On these, there are some written documents now

- from these different musicologists? - I've got letters or e-mails...

That could be...

That's incorporated into a draft catalogue entry,

which I wrote last year.

OK. We could use this information?

You could use this information.

Because it would be interesting to see who are these musicologists

and see with Bill...

who is more a musician than a musicologist.

The drawings I saw in Berlin,

there we discovered that with Bill,

that we know which music is performed at a place

and it's so complex in the positions on the instrument

that he must've known music, because that element was not clear.

In these drawings, it cannot be otherwise -

he knows how to play.

Knowing music - that's also an element.

That's an important thing to praise.

Yes, that's also the element of the drawings in the Kupferstichkabinett,

by Dr Altcappenberg in Berlin.

The drawings I saw there last week and so,

from the work that was done by Bill, he knows now that in the...

..in the different drawings, there's one of a hobo,

then another one of a gambler.

There's no scores there, it's only drawings of positions.

- They're convincing, yeah. - And also, the complexity of...

We were there with several musicians,

also from the Berlin Philharmonic,

who came to see and everyone is convinced -

you cannot draw if you don't know music.

It's like we would say in...photography,

it's like in film, to make just that moment...

I think everybody accepts that that's a new musician

and he knew his musical instruments.

I mean, that represents the type of...

It was not clear that it was not music -

that's not clear for me in the drawings.

It's not clear that he actually plays the music himself,

which is a different thing.

But that represents a guitar of a type

that was being made in Paris around 1700.

You know, that's pretty accurate.

You see, they say the black's been strengthened a lot,

because black's the most soluble paint.

I mean, she's missing a few fingernails,

which makes you wonder, did they also take off a few notes?

And you've got to be very careful interpreting what it is now,

those musical notes.

It's good to see, good to hear the case. You're a surprise visitor.

- And good luck with your exhibition, whatever happens. - Danke. - Thank you.

This is a beautiful room.

Well, I think it's the most beautiful room in the gallery.

- Ha-ha, what are you going to say, Bill? - I mean, look at this...

That touch, very delicate...touch.

She can't believe...

because she's totally in love with this shepherd boy, you know?

She just can't believe how beautiful he is

and she's got to touch him, to make sure...

..That he's real.

And the dogs... That dog is amazing.

- Anyway... I mustn't keep you. - Well, I'm glad.

But it's lovely to be back.

Well, you must come and see us more often.

And in the middle of the 16th century,

we have something called the Counter-Reformation

taking place in Italy,

in response to the challenge of Luther,

as he challenges the Catholic Church.

And one of the things that comes into question is

the value of images.

Are images dangerous because they are likely to be understood

as replicants of God,

or replicants of figures from the Bible?

Or are they important, as a way into understanding the word of God,

as it was written?

So, this is a debate that is taking place

and what happens in Italy is, there is a proliferation of images.

In other words, the response is to make more images

and to make them as emotional as possible,

so that you feel a sense within yourself of what is happening.

And the message is one of fraternal love.

It's a universal message

and it's something that we can all relate to

and the idea is that you go away from the experience of viewing

feeling more love towards your fellow man.

I guess all I'd like to point out here is that having seen that issue

with the blanched ground downstairs

and how that disrupted that space,

I think you might have your eye on enough to start to recognise it here.

The more dramatic examples are something like this,

where you've got part of the table.

Again, this isn't him correcting something,

but the actual paint he subsequently applied on top of the ground

is very close and colour to what that would have been,

so they didn't intend a great blotchy space.

And again, we have more and more empirical evidence about that,

beyond just looking at the material itself.

This rather pale thing is absolutely...

It's a strong shadow cast from her arm.

You see the way goes up the side of the table and makes a sharp angle?

It's the cash out of the arm falling and so,

obviously that must be a darker value than this.

See, that gets to the core of what I was saying downstairs,

about when the pigment change is so localised

that it's really quite disruptive to understanding what the thing is.

That is a different kind of argument about what you might do

as a restorer to correct that,

or at least to reduce the effects of problematic effects.

One of the most fundamental issues -

well, I wouldn't say problematic, but certainly an open question,

where this picture is concerned -

and that has to do with the basic construction of the space.

Where the wall is - is that a window? Is it a picture of a picture?

All those kinds of issues.

Anyway, the evidence provided by the ground

and the shadows suggest that this table is right up against the wall.

You have a painted shadow here in black paint,

of the fish's head against the wall,

which tells you that it's quite close and the fact that that's cast there

I think is also pretty important

in fixing where that thing sits in space.

Again, this kind of ground colour here -

and then mixed with a bit of white and applied shadow...

It all starts to make sense.

This has still got quite a bit of retouching that needs to be done.

Then you can see the brush wipings here that are partially covered

in ground-coloured paint by Velazquez -

and have been exposed by old cleanings.

And you have the basic ground colour, the darker shadow

and what would have probably been an even darker one leading to the table.

It all starts to make sense if you start to substitute this colour.

And I think...

I hope you might agree that this then is pretty fundamental

to understanding what's going on.

Similarly, this area of the old woman's chin -

it sort of comes forward now in a sort of Cubist way.

And that's again because of blanched ground. It should be much darker.

So wherever you see this substitute a darker value,

I think all kinds of things start falling into place about the way

the elements are modelled and where they are in relation to one another.

And it's such a limited palette and such an austere kind of image,

I think these issues are really pretty fundamental

to your reading and understanding of the picture

and what he's trying to do.

So, that's why we might take a slightly different view

about how to approach its retouching.

Everything that Larry is now doing in terms of retouching

is on top of a layer of varnish that, once it's cleaned,

it's varnished and then Larry works on top of the varnish,

so that all the work that he does -

the tens if not hundreds of hours that goes into restoring a picture -

the next time it's cleaned, it comes right off.

The whole... The basic principle of modern conservation

is that anything we do should be reversible -

that the next generation can reverse it very easily.

Months or years of work is gone in 15 minutes.

But that's OK.

It gets to the core of how you feel about

whether this is a document or a kind of archaeological thing,

or whether you want to restore it as an image you read -

and how confident you are in what you're doing.

It's not just because Dawson and I scratch our heads

and think, "Wouldn't it be lovely if that was this or that?"

It's based on an understanding of the material,

historical sources and comparative images and evidence,

as I showed you downstairs, of Velazquez himself,

mixing colours to match the ground that he used.

So it's important to remember that, too.

There are really good reasons

for the decisions we take in matters like this.

I just want to also make sure

that you understand what Larry's been saying

about him using the ground colour in modelling -

that it was the original ground colour that he trusted,

he thought, "Oh, that looks just right in that shadow..."

He doesn't cover it.

And this isn't just Velazquez -

there are lots of painters who use ground colour in modelling,

as a kind of mid-tone, sometimes.

Caravaggio does it, for instance. It's not at all uncommon.

The intent is to restore the thing as a work of art that you read.

At the end of the process,

that wall should more or less carry on cross-colouring from light to dark

in a way that I hope you'll be able to see.

I don't want to leave the impression that we believe

that our retouchings and restorations make the picture look as it did.

We're just trying to help you understand what it is -

and maybe what it was.

It's a balancing act, but a restoration is not a renewal.

No. Of course, they're physical objects, made of organic materials -

and the second they're finished, they start to age.

And that's just that.

We haven't really talked about the meaning of this.

It naturally invites...

some consideration of the relationship of religion

to contemporary life.

The two women in the foreground

are clearly figures from contemporary life

and one has to wonder -

what's this really about?

Are they simply serving people

and the meal is going to go through the hatch

and be served in the other room?

Or do they, in some way, represent a modern day Mary and Martha?

Do you remember the story?

Christ comes to visit Mary and Martha

and Mary sits attentively at Christ's feet

and listens to his teaching, while Martha makes herself very busy,

going about all the chores and then comes to complain

that she's been left to do everything and Mary isn't helping.

And Christ chides her and says,

Martha, Martha, you're concerned about so many things,

but Mary's really taken the better path

in allowing time for her spiritual development.

And so, we have to ask ourselves,

is this Martha and Mary in the foreground in contemporary guise,

with the old woman chiding with 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?

They're the great words,

used often in relation to this painting,

from 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.

MAN PLAYS PIANO BABY CRIES

- MAN: - Keep it up! Make some noise!

CROWD CHEERS

HUBBUB

CHATTERING

CHATTERING

CHATTERING

WOMAN: I'm in London now, for a couple of weeks.

Ebony frame so, of course, interesting.

World first, I want to explain where I think the ripple moulding

comes from. These mouldings are called ripple mouldings.

There's a wave pattern.

Very interesting, they're really the only, um, ornament,

frame ornament that does not ultimately come from antiquity.

It is a non-classical ornament

and I think it came about because of the way the ebony is...um...

worked with, because when you work with ebony it is not,

um, carved or planed like other woods, it is scraped

with a scraper at right angles to the wood. Like...

Something like this,

the metal scraper that is scraped across a piece of wood

and lowered, incrementally, but the process of scraping is very,

um, the forces are quite, it's quite, um...

The wood is very hard and it's, it's...it is quite difficult.

You only scrape a tiny bit off each time and in the process,

the whole apparatus that you use tends to vibrate and what you have

is a ripple effect on the straight, this was just done straightened.

I'm not sure if you can see it in the light,

but you can certainly feel it.

It's a ripple that is voluntary, that is a ripple

that just happens when you try to scrape it straight

and then you just 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.

Normally I'm against illuminating the way frames are made

because it somehow doesn't seem important.

If you go to a Rembrandt exhibition, no-one is going to tell you how

the canvas is prepared and the paints are made and all these

technical bits.

But I find it interesting with the ebony frame, that I think it is

accidental, and a discovery from the making of the frames.

FOOTSTEPS CHATTERING

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 is one explanation for 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 could only reconstruct ancient painting in that way,

but it's curious that so many of the things that attract him

about the ancient world and 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 is very extraordinary

but what makes it extraordinary of course is that the rest

of the sculpture appears to be made of polished brass.

It means that Poussin has actually thought, "Maybe, in antiquity,

"they did not patinate their sculptures"

and he was very learned

and in touch with all the most erudite students

of antiquity in his day,

some of these things I've been mentioning aren't actually

mentioned even by modern art historical

commentators on it on this painting

but they would be of great interest to, and these subjects are of

great interest - the colouring faces 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...um, the fact that Poussin must have known

that he was painting pictures

which would hang beside old paintings by Montagna.

Montagna 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 "paragone" - 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 thought 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 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 is 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, because 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 probably very small public.

I'm really thrilled we have it in the National Gallery.

I personally don't know whether I like it or not,

but I certainly think

it's one of the most fascinating paintings in the National Gallery.

It's very, very extraordinary. Thank you very much.

Part of the appeal of Vermeer's paintings

and other paintings like them in the 17th century

is that they create an ideal world, an ideal image,

that is...seductive, and absolutely, um...

pleasant to look at.

You're drawn into the beauty of it.

I think it's not just us in the 21st century

that the painting has that impact on.

I think it was exactly the same in the 17th century.

Part of that, of course, is in the way in which Vermeer paints.

He has an absolutely unique style

that somehow finds a balance between realism and abstraction.

From a distance, even short distance,

you're struck by how realistic this is.

You think, "Oh, wow, that woman,

"I want to step closer and get to know her."

But as you get closer, just like Impressionist paintings,

that sense of realism dissolves into abstraction.

And it remains forever elusive,

again creating a barrier between our world and this idea world

represented in the paintings.

I think that is intentional on Vermeer's part,

to, um, emphasise and to maintain

the perfection of the world that he's created.

It's also, as so many of Vermeer's paintings,

a very, um, ambiguous painting.

Because of the woman's restraint,

because of the absolute regularity

and almost austerity of the composition,

it's hard to tell exactly what the painting is about.

What might be going on in this painting.

Art historians can go on endlessly

about the symbolism of the painting in the background,

and, you know, the angle of this and the juxtaposition of that...

but how do we know that that's entirely what Vermeer had in mind?

And of course, as any other art historian,

I've written, "This means this, that means that,"

but there's always an element of ambiguity, a question there,

that I firmly believe is absolutely intentional

on the part of the best artists.

Because it's designed to keep you intrigued,

to keep you coming back, to keep your attention on this painting.

And each time you come to the painting, depending on your mood,

who else is in the room, what you had for lunch,

it's going to look slightly different.

It's going to appeal to you, you're going to engage with it,

in an entirely different way.

There's a very, very interesting relationship

between his painting technique

and the things that we value and prize about Caravaggio -

the immediacy of the effect of the models,

the dramatic lighting...

A lot of the things he does in his working practice

as well as the application of paint are all kind of inextricably bound

with what we treasure in them.

So I'll start off with Boy Bitten by a Lizard.

The main thing I'd like to convey about this picture

is to get you to understand a little bit

about how he's using his priming, his ground -

that's the layer he puts on the canvas

before he starts painting the figure.

In this case it's a kind of rich, bricky red-brown colour.

This is something that he's exploiting, then,

in the subsequent build-up of the paint.

The brown colour is left exposed quite deliberately

to help him evolve the modelling of the flesh tones.

Bellori, an important critic writing in the 1670s,

was already writing about this - how he used the ground exposed

to give the middle colours of the flesh painting.

You can see that in the shadow sort of around the breast

and the shadowed part of the cheek, the shadowed part of the hands,

and quite a lot of drapery painting is essentially the ground colour.

And it's a very economical way of proceeding,

because once you establish the figure, you use the ground,

you can put a very thin, translucent brown colour

to push the shadows back, and then when you build

the lighter colours up, when you're mixing the light-coloured paint

and putting it on top of a darker ground,

it gets very opaque very quickly, and so it's extremely economical.

I mean, the dark grounds are things that were evolved and used

more and more frequently in Italy throughout the 16th century,

particularly in North Italy, where he was formed.

And I think, however, that he managed to exploit this technique

and kind of make it his own and bend it toward his purposes

in a very characteristic way.

We, with Renaissance paintings,

have the ability generally to look with infrared reflectography

and see evidence of initial drawing,

and that's based on a carbon containing charcoal or something

drawn on top of a light ground,

and so the contrast is something we can pick up with infrared.

Now with these pictures, traditionally, with the dark ground

and whatever kind of paint that might have been used to draw,

you really don't see anything with that technique,

so it's always been a great mystery about Caravaggio -

did he draw, and in what sense did he do preparatory drawing?

Because we don't have, really, drawings on paper.

He's playing a bit of a game with you about what skill is

and what craft is and how speedy and confident he was.

There's a kind of... Seemingly a taste or a desire

to look, to have that kind of sprezzatura, the brio,

the ability to do something, to knock it off very confidently.

But like many things in Caravaggio,

what may seem...what is indeed revolutionary

is still grounded in a very careful and considered use of his materials.

And somebody who always, whatever the sordid details of his personal life,

somebody who always was in really fantastic control of his materials

and understanding of how the paint worked.

So I think that's the thing I'd like to leave with you.

What's going on here? What's happened in my absence?

In your absence.

- Well, we've done a bit of a re-hang, as you can tell. - Yeah.

Definitely. It's changed a lot, actually.

I think there's only two or three pictures that haven't actually moved.

So basically what we had to do,

we had to find a spot for The Virgin of the Rocks.

And here it is now. What do you think?

I was thinking that it looked strange, actually.

That change a lot from before.

First reaction...

it's something that I think is visual, you know?

There's another...

Another world of colour, if you know what I mean.

It's a completely different world.

When we saw it downstairs in the exhibition,

how nicely it worked with the other, later Milanese pictures,

and that the composition may be Florentine,

but the whole painting is Milanese.

There is a theoretical issue that,

as you said, it's a Milanese painting,

but also visually I think that it's something a bit puzzling, isn't it?

Possibly... Even if the drawing probably is Florentine.

Well, the idea, the composition is Florentine,

and of course, you know, now you have...

It's a difficult picture to find a place for, actually,

in the gallery.

And there is an argument to be made, and I think, in a way, it works,

and you show him together with Verrocchio,

with his teacher, and, you know, side by side.

But, er...

it doesn't sing as nicely.

It did sing downstairs.

The only thing is...it might be instructive seeing how Leonardo...

How Leonardo evolution...

- is completely different. - How it moves into a different direction.

If you put in relations with his old Florentine friends,

that is quite a struggle, but actually,

contrast the way of...

The display of our own one.

I think it's...quite strange.

But there's something quite nice

about this being situated in the corner,

because you enter the Sainsbury Wing

and you kind of meander throughout the rooms

and then you discover the Leonardo in the corner

almost as if you'd discovered the kind of little grouping in the cave.

- Which...is quite nice. - Mm.

RADIO: Bravo 1 receiving, over.

In Titian's letter, he says, "I'm painting," er, "Diana,

"surprised by Actaeon,

"and Actaeon..." What's the word he uses?

"..lacerated by his own hounds."

So originally, these two pictures

would have been the pair that he wanted to send to King Philip.

This painting remains in Titian's studio, never finished by Titian,

and is bought from his studio after his death.

So he decides not to do this,

and instead he produces Diana and Callisto as the pair,

- so he has... - A different one? - Yeah, it's different,

but they both show Diana as taking sort of vengeance

on a mortal, or on a...um...

And also the moment of...

Interestingly, they're kind of opposite pictures,

because...here, the pregnant nymph Callisto

is being exposed, and Diana realises she's pregnant.

Here, it's Diana who's being exposed,

and who is... By Actaeon, and here there is a female of Diana

and here a male victim. HE COUGHS

They were probably hung opposite each other, so we've tried to suggest that

by putting them a little bit differently.

But we want people to see this with that.

- This picture we acquired 25 years ago... - From?

- From Lord Harewood. - So it was in England.

Yeah, in England. The Earl of Harewood

had the painting from Lord Darnley,

who...whose great-great-great grandfather purchased it

at the Orleans sale.

How it got to the Orleans Collection,

it got to the Orleans Collection because, er,

it was one of the pictures that, um...

From... The Queen of Sweden

acquired it on her way to Rome.

I think.

Yes, that's the best explanation.

And then these pictures were actually presented

by the Spanish crown

to, I think, the French ambassador,

who was acquiring them for, er, the Regent of France,

who was, of course, a very, very great art collector.

Painted in the 1550s, sent to Spain,

- stay in Spain until... - A couple of hundred years.

Couple of hundred years, and then go to France,

into the semi-royal collection of the Duke d'Orleans,

and then to England.

I'm very fond of the Duke d'Orleans.

He was a good guy in his, er...

Yeah, and he was also, you know, he was an amateur cook.

He was one of the first, um... princely, or noble, people,

who is known to have liked to do his own cooking

and experiment with cooking.

hat he did...after dinner is a different matter.

THEY LAUGH

- I think it's nice that he... - Common habit, cooker, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, we know he liked arranging his own paintings,

but what amazes me about him is that when he got

the great collection of the Queen of Sweden from Rome -

she took ten or 15 years to negotiate -

he then hung...

He wanted to see the paintings,

obviously he would have new French frames made for them,

um...

of course, cos everyone would do that,

but before he had them made,

he wanted to see them in the frames

which that... "Cette grande princesse" -

the Queen of Sweden, had seen them in.

I think that's fantastic.

Right, OK.

I'm going to read a poem called Callisto's Song.

Callisto was the nymph who was then turned into a bear

who ended her life flung up into the heavens as a constellation.

She became the Great Bear.

So in order to write her poem in her voice,

I had to imagine how a constellation might sound,

so on the page, visually, I've translated her noise,

her song as a star,

into every word being divided by an asterisk.

So it looks like a constellation.

In my head I feel if I could read it as I hear her,

there would be kind of white noise, star crunching, crackling noises

between every word.

But I can't really do that, so probably the most you'll hear

is a little syncopation.

Callisto's Song.

Stars, stars, stars, stars

And I am made of them now

Looking down on myself then

A colorito woman, yes

That was me in my red sandals

The great outdoors curtained Goldened, embroidered

And heat shimmer above blue mountains

Nothing vertical, not even the plinth

And no speech.

No names, then, just a cry

As the busybody nymphs stripped me

Because we all had rounded bellies then

But nine months gone

So my navel curved like a gash

And oh, so noticeable among all the diagonals

And everyone looking a different way

Looking a lot

Especially the goddess

Her arrow arm pointing

Bow mouth strong

And dogs crouched

Because they sensed consequences

And gods arriving

And doing what gods do upstairs

And the artist's finger, loaded

And the paint alive

Alive with stars

Stars, stars, stars, stars.

So can we start off by talking about the painting?

Diana's such a powerful figure.

She's female...

but full of fire and strength.

She's very intriguing.

Her reaction to Callisto is fascinating,

because Diana is of course the goddess of chastity.

She's actually faced with another female

at the kind of maximum moment of fecundity,

so there's a tension and a kind of fury in Diana

that you feel goes beyond anything that Callisto's done.

Because after all, in a sense Callisto's been raped,

and now, in this revelation, she's raped again

by the pointing finger.

So, um, it's.... I think it's the dynamic of these different sides

of femaleness, of womanhood,

that come through in the story as Titian tells it.

If you like, every poem is a kind of crude translation of something else.

Our poems never, never reach what we want them to.

You know, we're always, in a way...

hampered by language.

And that's what's wonderful.

Yeats talks about "the fascination of what's difficult,"

and the fact that language isn't perfect, the fact that

when I say the word "hand" it is not my hand,

is really beautiful and poignant to me.

So in a way, all of my poems are efforts to translate

something else, and they never quite do.

But the gap is... The meaning is all in the gaps.

And I felt that with Callisto's Song,

that I set myself, you know, not just a gap,

but sort of several light-years to straddle between

what she might sing and how I might transcribe it.

MUSIC STARTS