Out of Date

The portrait of Duke Alessandro de' Medici has elimniated itself as its too 'modern'- 1550 - the IE piece has to be before 1530 so, that leaves two.

Down to the last three....

Posted TMA 02 electronically last night so now I can focus on TMA 03 which is what’s called the pro Forma for the Independent Essay (IE) which is what this Blog’s all about. TMA 03 is the OU enquiring into the validity of your chosen subject and title do they fit with the courses times - 1440 to 1530 and objectives - making, locating and viewing art of the period.

I’ve reduced my piece to a selection from one of three – all from the V&A’s collections

1 A della Robbia altar piece

2 An English Rood 15th century Rood Screen with the three magi presenting gifts to the Virgin and child.

3 A portrait of Duke Alessandro de' Medici

Each has black presence, which I’ll explore over the next few days. At the same time I need to find a course object to compare them to for the sake a balanced question. As the question I have in mind is something like …

How representative is the Black presence in YYYYY’s XXXXXX during the Renaissance period compared with that in ZZZZZZZ’s WWWWWW?

A Day at the V&A

Had an excellent day there, met two very helpful people Helen and Janet who gave me lots of ideas to follow up. So, many in fact I've abandoned the Ashmoluem piece , just too difficult and not that attractive in contrast the V&A has some lovely works with a Black presence. I've almost decided on which piece but I want to use the posting exercise to examine a few more in a little more detail.

After the meeting I spent the day looking at some pieces and pictures, I'll post these over the coming days, before ending it in the V&A’s fabulous (or so I thought) library.

The afternoon in the library was very revealing. I ordered only two books one they didn't have - Paul Kaplan's seminal work The Rise of the Black Magus in Western Art - I need to go to the Bodleian in Oxford for which I need a letter from my tutor to see this book; the other Ladislas Bugner and Prof David Bindman's equally seminal The Image of the Black In Western Art - they had it BUT it was store the other side of the building which meant a two hour wait….hmmm..not a great introduction to V&A’s library. However the staff were great friendly and helpful, the system of finding a place and ordering books is a bit antediluvian hope I can get use to it.

The wait for The Image was worth it I spent a hasty 45 mins as it ws close to closing time leafing thru it. On the down side I ordered the wrong part – there are three! This covered Egypt, Greece and Rome the later centuries are covered in the other two books nevertheless some great images interestingly they did most of their research through pictures 6.5 million from 40 institutions worldwide. I was taught it was a cheat for an author to write about a piece they had not seen in the flesh, I guess the title of the book does not require they actually see the piece!

IE at the V&A

Bartolommeo degli Erri's St Vincent Ferrer preaching before a Pope (and detail above) Off to the V&A today to discuss my Independent Essay - a 4,500 word essay on a subject with the courses time frame 1420 to 1520. Mines's going to be on some aspect of Blacks in the Rennaissance (hence the title of the Blog) . I was looking at at an obscure work in the Ashmoluem - see above.

Looking at the Black in the lower left shown enlarged above, but having been to the V&A and visted its web site have found it to be a more fruitful source of documented works. They also have a very useful site on BARE...see my favourites.

The IE is to be an 'investigation' not research the Ashmoulem piece was poorly documented so, would have required far too much research in languages I don't know well at all aka Latin and Italian.

Let's see what the V&A produces...

Art Is The Thing

This is my very favourite photograph. I'd love to say I planned it but 'it just happened' ! Which is the great thing about digital photography as Lenin (or was it Stalin?) said 'Quanity has quality of its own' or photographically if you take n photos 1/n th of them will be any good.