The 20th Exit Through The Giftshop - Pictures At An Exhibition

...and finally we get to the 100th postcard!

1) ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1923) - Man Ray

I bought this at the National Portrait Gallery's excellent Man Ray retrospective in 2013.  I was immediately struck by his wonderful photograph of the 24 year-old Ernest Hemingway who stares at us out of the darkness.  Wearing a soft cotton shirt, a tie and woolly jumper, he looks handsome, brooding and contained.

Hemingway was married and living in Paris at the time of the photograph working as the foreign correspondant for the Toronto Star newspaper.  More importantly he was moving in the modernist circles of Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Ezra Pound and, later that year, would publish his first collection of short stories and poems. What a face, what a photograph..

2) CAVALCATA DEL MAGI (detail) (1459-1461) - Benozzo Gozzoli

 

I bought this on our first visit to Florence when we visited the imposing Palazzo Medici-Riccardi; inside the Palazzo is the small Magi Chapel which houses the remarkable Gozzoli fresco on all four walls. showing the lavish process of the three wise men to visit Christ, along with various members of the all-powerful Medici family, their noblemen and the last Byzantine Emperor John VIII.  Smirking here in a yellow tunic is Caspar the youngest of the Magi which is believed to be based on Lorenzo de Medici.

Like the Sistine Chapel, here you are surrounded by art but due to it's smaller size, you can appreciate it all the more.  Gozzoli was a pupil of Fra Angelico and helped him with several of the San Marco cell frescos and the Niccoline Chapel in The Vatican.  Because of it's intimacy it is easier to become fascinated by the masterly detailing on the clothes and livery, the jagged landscape, the draughtsmanship of the animals and the many faces on display.
 

3) UGO FOSCOLO (1939) - Antonio Berti

 

I was immediately struck when visiting the wonderful Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence by the Byronic sweep of this statue of Ugo Foscolo - if only I knew who he was!  I had never heard of him but he was obviously importatnt to stand alongside the graves of Michelangelo, Galileo and Rossini.

It turned out I was right about the 'Byronic sweep' as Foscolo was a 19th Century Italian poet, writer on politics and critic.  He moved to England for the last eleven years of his life and died aged 49 in Turnham Green of all places.  44 years later, his remains were reburied in Santa Croce as part of a reclaiming of Italian civic heroes after the unification of Italy.  Over 60 years later, Berti's romantic sculpture was added.

4) HOLY FAMILY WITH THE INFANT ST JOHN THE BAPTIST (1506-1508) - Michelangelo Buonarroti

I bought this at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence which is the home for this remarkable rondo by Michelangelo.  It was commissioned by the merchant Agnolo Doni and Michelangelo completed it before he started work on the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican.

The circular form must have challenged Michelangelo as to it's content but he painted a complicated but remarkable image. The Virgin Mary kneels on the ground in a beautifully-draped gown and twists to accept the baby Jesus from Joseph seated behind her. It could be ungainly and awkward but Michelangelo's solid fleshy figures and blocks of colour make your eyes travel around the painting with ease.

5) THE DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM (1822-1826) - John Martin

Who needed cinema in the 1820s when you had John Martin on tour?  I bought this at Tate Britain's John Martin exhibition in 2011 featuring his huge historical and biblical landscapes.  This is actually his second smaller version on the subject which now resides in Manchester University, the original resides in the Tate archives.

John Martin's paintings were hugely popular and they would be toured around the country with special lighting effects to summon up the right reactions of shock and awe.  Needless to say the critics viewed his paintings less than the public did and there is something soulless about his work, it's gargantuan with huge skies and tons of lowering clouds of smoke with tiny figures washed up on the shores across from the doomed cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum but where is the emotion?  You decide...