Hello. My name is Letizia, and I'm a curator at the National Gallery.
The gallery finally reopened its doors in early July, and some of you may have
already visited, but I imagine most of you have not yet
had the opportunity to do so. During lockdown I thought a great deal
about the Collection, about the pictures I was separated from,
and I had to make do with zooming in and out on images on my computer screen.
And of course this doesn't replace the experience of standing in front of an
object, but it is easier to get up close and to
appreciate details that you may not have noticed
before. So today, I want to focus on some of the smaller works in our collection.
I want to encourage you to take a closer look.
Most paintings in the National Gallery are painted either on wood
or on canvas, but artists use lots of different supports for their pictures.
They painted on different stones, on marble, even on slate,
as in this picture of figures mourning over the dead Christ.
This is by an anonymous painter who is copying
a very famous composition by the 17th century Neapolitan painter
Massimo Stanzione. Now Stanzione's original
is a large canvas still in Naples, and the copyist here
has reduced it onto a small scale, and has chosen to paint it on
slate. He set the grieving figures gathered around Christ against the very
dark grey of the slate, and this of course has the
effect of the scene taking place at night. So why did artists
use different supports? Well today I want to focus on paintings
in our collection that are painted on copper. Copper was
more expensive than say, wood or canvas. It was also more
durable. An artist needed to flatten and prepare
the copper before he could paint on it, and in the 17th century copper plates
were flattened by hand using a hammer. Now because of the limit
of the size of copper plate, pictures on copper tend to be on quite a
small scale, and the copper's very hard smooth
surface really lends itself to a very fine,
meticulous way of painting, and the colours
often appear much more brilliant. A wonderful example of all of this
in our collection is Guido Reni's 'The Coronation of the Virgin'
of around 1607. This is one of the largest coppers in
our collection. It's about the size of a broadsheet newspaper,
and it's a sumptuous, precious object. Reni has used bold rich colours. The blue
for example, on the Virgin's robe right in the centre of the picture, is
ultramarine, a precious pigment made from the
semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. The copper's hard, smooth
surface is perfect for painting fine details.
Look at the billowing draperies and fluffy clouds in the upper corners,
and the delicate curls and wisps of hair of the angels just beside the Virgin.
The wings of the angels in the foreground are particularly delicate.
They're painted with feathery strokes, almost certainly with a fine brush,
and the one playing the lute, his wings are almost blue,
and that hint of blue really chimes with the shimmering robes he wears,
the shot colours.
When the picture was examined closely at the Gallery, we found
that the copper had a silvery coating, a layer of tin
and lead, which gives the surface a very luminous effect.
And artists knew this. One artist in particular
who liked using these silvered coppers was Adam
Elsheimer. Elsheimer was born in Frankfurt,
but actually worked in Italy for much of his short life.
He specialized in these small scale, highly detailed scenes,
and they were much in demand. He was very successful,
even though he suffered from melancholy and depression.
Elsheimer was admired both for the precision of his technique,
but also for his inventive and dynamic compositions.
I'm showing you here 'The Baptism of Christ' of around 1599.
This picture looks like it's a huge monumental altarpiece,
but in fact it's painted on a small copper. It's about the size of an a4
sheet of paper. It shows John the Baptist, baptizing
Christ in the river Jordan. Look at the water rippling around
Christ's leg. The figures are lit from behind, and if
you follow the beams of light up into the sky,
you can just make out the bearded figure of God the Father,
seated in the clouds. In the foreground, there's a man completely in shadow. He's
taking off his shoe, he's getting undressed because he's next
in line to be baptized. Elsheimer uses light to guide our eye
around this picture, and so from the foreground figures, we
look across at the bystanders in the middle ground.
There's a man wearing a turban riding a horse, and next to him,
a fashionably dressed man with a plumed hat and
a slash doublet, who's pointing at the main figures
of Christ and the baptist. Next to them is an angel hovering in the
sky, holding up Christ's red drapery. Look at how the
light just catches his hair, the edge of his wing, and the sleeve that
seems to be billowing, to give you the impression of the angel
fluttering in the sky.
Your eye is then led to the very intense blue of the sky,
but also the mountain range beyond, and there's a dense
forest. And Elsheimer's taken great care in showing you different types of trees
and vegetation. He uses very small, repetitive strokes to
indicate the foliage of the trees, but then uses longer, looser marks to
suggest the crops being reaped by two spindly little
figures. And right next to them is a little
horse-drawn plow. Water gushes from a waterfall just
behind the baptist's head. The movement of this water echoes the
trickle of water from his hand.
The closer I look at this picture, the more I wonder how Elsheimer achieves
such incredible detail, and whether he painted it under
magnification. The picture certainly benefits from being looked at
on a screen, zooming in and out. But we have an even smaller picture by
Elsheimer in the National Gallery's collection.
It shows Saint Paul shipwrecked on the island of Malta,
and is painted around 1600, a year or so later
than 'The Baptism of Christ'. This picture is only slightly larger than a postcard.
It's set at night, and it's very dark, except for the moonlight
breaking through the clouds, catching the foam and the spray
of these waves crashing on the rocks. You can just make out a flaming
lighthouse perched on a rocky crag in the distance,
and in the foreground, red hot ash spat out by fires that have been lit by
the shipwreck survivors to keep warm, and if you look closely, to dry their
clothes. Paul is the main protagonist, but he's
quite hard to find. He's wearing red and green, and is in the
corner next to the fire, holding a snake. He's
about to throw the snake into the flames. And look at how carefully Elsheimer has
painted the scales of the snake, and how they glimmer and catch the light
from the fire. Now although this miniaturist approach
to painting on copper was extremely effective,
some artists made use of the copper's smooth surface
to brush paint on with extraordinary fluidity.
One such example is Guercino and his 'The Dead Christ Mourned by Two Angels'
around 1617 - 18. Here the paint is very loosely applied.
You can see where the brush has swept across the surface, loaded with paint.
This picture is not about details, it's about the overall effect of light.
Look at Christ's limp, lifeless body. This is the main focus of the picture, and the
brushwork is so smooth. There's a wonderful halo of light
around Christ's head, and the white shroud has been painted
with very loose brush strokes. It always reminds me of
whipped cream. In this picture Guercino has a very light,
impressionistic touch. Look at the stripes on the beige drapery
right in the centre of the picture. They're barely there, and there's
confident strokes of light-colored paint on the wing of the angel in the centre,
and this gives it a really soft feathery appearance. But of course, it's nothing
like Reni or Elsheimer's very precise manner
of painting feathers.
There's a single stroke of white under the chin of the angel on the right,
and it really draws our attention to this very poignant gesture,
of the angel resting his forehead on his clenched fist.
The paint is thickly applied. It stands out. It's what we call
impasto, and it gives the surface a very fresh,
textured quality. Now unlike Reni or Elsheimer,
we get the impression when we look at this picture that Guercino painted it
very quickly. You can even see some changes that he made
during painting. For example, he painted out a fold
of drapery across christ's belly. Despite being quite small, the picture is
incredibly monumental, and Guercino conveys a real intensity of
feeling. This object was cherished, it was
intended for private devotion. Small-scale works on copper were highly
prized among collectors. They were admired for their intimate
scale, and their jewel like radiance. They would have been held in the hand
and handled like objects, and admired under magnifying glasses.
They would have been displayed in either a bedroom or a study,
and now of course these pictures are in the National Gallery, and you can
experience some of that intimacy by enlarging them
on your screen, and looking really closely. For the most
part, pictures on copper are wonderfully
preserved. They have a very fresh quality, almost as if they were painted yesterday.
I always wonder how an artist could achieve such astonishing delicacy
and perfection with just a few strokes of the brush.
If you're interested in learning more about art history, please click here
or here. Thank you very much for watching, and we'll see you next time.