The aim of the project first and foremost was to introduce air
conditioning into the space. Gallery 32 is the largest room on the estate and
what it used to do was it used to take in fresh air from outside the building
from Victorian London. The problem with that, of course, is that Victorian London
wasn't very clean so it used to bring in all sorts of other pollutants which
would affect the paintings over time.
So I'm Peter Walker, I'm a Project Manager with Hare & Humphries. The job
we're doing here at the National Gallery is Gallery 32. We're doing all the
painted and gilded decoration above the lower cornice level. The idea is to
take it back to as it might have looked in the Victorian period: brighter, cleaner and fresher.
It was all whitewashed in here so it was impossible to see what was here so there was a big
long process, working with a Conservator, to get this colour scheme as you see here.
Part of the, sort of, expert analysis was to understand what contemporary pigments
were that they would have used at the time so we could then trial and re-represent
those colours as they may have originally looked in the room. The room is so big
that you can't possibly get a single piece of fabric that size so if you look
at that wall now it's stretched you can probably just about see the seams
where it's been sewn together.
It's 27 widths of material so it's quite a weight.
As you can see from the centre we've hung it up just in sections, just
to hold all the weight up in one position and then we gradually work it out from
the centre. It's best to do it in stages, you can't rush these, especially the size
of these walls as well.
Even these cast iron grills here, these are all bespoke
units that we had to design and develop with a foundry. There's the nuts and
bolts of the project that I'm quite familiar with like timber floors and
concrete and things like that but it was really the, sort of, one-off bespoke items
that have made this different for me and also quite a special part of the project.
I'm Letizia Treves, I'm the Sassoon Curator of later Italian and
Spanish Paintings here at the National Gallery and I'm standing in Room 32
which has just recently been refurbished and what we hang in here is the Italian
Baroque paintings, the 17th century Italian paintings and it's a room that
was designed really to hang large-scale works and that's exactly what we intend
to hang in here. So this is every curator's dream, to have a gallery that's
completely empty so you can really look afresh at your collection and think
about how you want to hang pictures, think about groupings, about scale and I
suppose, in the 17th century, what I want to represent in here is the different
schools of painting within Italy and obviously there are some big names in
here like Caravaggio, Guido Reni, Carracchi, but it's about
representing those pictures here in some sort of context.
Now we've rehung all the pictures
and we're currently doing the lighting in preparation for the Gallery reopening.
So Room 32 is the largest hanging space in the National Gallery
and that presents a real challenge to me as a curator because you have to give
some sense of symmetry to this room and so one of the key things I wanted to do
was thinking about the main approach of our visitors, having a major
picture on vista and that is Reni's 'Adoration'. It's our largest altarpiece
in the Italian Baroque collection but other things you think about when you
hang paintings is, of course, symmetry but you think about how works will function
next to each other, you think about figure scale and colouring and this sort
of thing and you also try, or at least I try, and group the schools together so on this
wall behind me we have a selection of paintings from the Neapolitan school and
I wanted to hang these at this end of the Gallery because through those doors
you walk through to the Spanish 17th century collection and, of course, Naples
in the 17th century was under Spanish rule so it gives some coherence to the
visitor journey but in such a long wall, as we have on this side
you really have to think about how you can break down these sections and so
you try and really find major imposing paintings to anchor these walls so in the center here is
Giordano's painting of 'Perseus' and we have an equivalent large picture on the
other side. One of the thrills of being able to finally rehang this Gallery is
not only to pull some pictures out of store, things that haven't been viewed for
a long time by our public but also it's a chance to show new things in the
collection so Guido Reni's 'Lot and his Daughters' has just had conservation
treatment, this is the first time people will be able to see it after it has been
cleaned and as you can see the colours are so wonderful: the reds of Lot's cloth
has really jumped out and the figures now sit properly in their space.
It's been really transformational this treatment. Another new thing is framing.
So we were thinking about the frames on our pictures and we've been able to
reframe this portrait by Gaulli of a cardinal. This had a rather fancy 19th
century gilt frame and this is now in an Italian 17th century frame which I think
is quite austere and black and gold, I think, really offset
that rich red silk of the cardinal's robes. One of the most thrilling things as a
curators is, of course, to hang new acquisitions. We've been quite active in
the Baroque area in recent years and this is, of course, our most recent acquisition
it's Orazio Gentileschi's 'Finding of Moses' which we acquired at the beginning of
this year, following the public appeal at the end of last year and, of course, just
a couple of years ago we were able to acquire a painting by Orazio's daughter,
Artemisia Gentileschi. Artemisia, of course, being the subject of a major exhibition
here at the National Gallery which had to be postponed unfortunately whic was due
to open in April and here she hangs right beside our great gems of the
Italian Baroque collection, the pictures by Caravaggio. So I can't wait for the public to be able
to see this room and to see this collection, appreciate it in this
magnificent Gallery and really this refurbishment that's gone
on for a number of months would not have been possible without the generous
support of Julia and Hans Rausing and that's why the Gallery will now be
renamed the Julia and Hans Rausing Room.
So I hope to welcome you all back here very, very soon.