Galleries - April 2014

generation in Venice, where he was based for 35 years until his death in 1588. His decorative expertise got him hauled before the Inquisition in 1573 over a New Testament feast scene that included ‘buffoons, drunkards, Germans, dwarves and other such scurrilous figures’. Veronese pleaded artistic licence as afforded to ‘poets and jesters’ and the need ‘to enrich spare space’. His highly successful career and workshop business continued unabated . . . AA Print Marks Prints stamp their mark this month. Take the emotionally charged engravings, charcoals and pen and inks which steal the National Gallery’s show of the 15/16th century ‘Masters of the German Renaissance’ to 11 May. Cases in point: the tender portrayal of an elderly woman with clasped hands and Ferdinand Piloty’s psychologically piercing lithograph of Albrecht Dürer which grabs the attention far longer than the neighbouring monumental paintings of Hans Holbein the Younger, Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder and others. Packing an even more powerful punch are the 16th century German, Italian and Dutch chiaroscuro woodcuts at the Royal Academy of Arts to 8 June. With surprising colour and poetic atmosphere, little wonder many come from the collection of artist Georg Baselitz. Gone are the stiff formalities of conventional Renaissance imagery; instead there’s writhing bodies in the Rape of the Sabine Women and ferocious violence as Hercules kills Cacus. The show is the dark horse of the season. Engravings, intricate architectural drawings and colourful book illustrations form the backbone of the Victoria & Albert Museum ’s exploration of the life and work of William Kent (1685-1748), the leading architect and designer of early Georgian Britain. Whilst at the time these prints were used to publicise himself, his work (see Horse Guards in Whitehall) and his ornate Palladian aesthetic (see the décor in Kensington Palace’s state apartments), today these prints provide a lively insight into the contemporaneous society – from the fashion for collecting luxury books to the hustle and bustle along London’s Piccadilly. Bringing prints into today’s modern world is the first exhibition to focus on David Hockney’s work as a printmaker at the Dulwich Picture Gallery to 11 May. From a raw self portrait lithograph as a teenage student at the Bradford College of Art in 1954 to the 2009 inkjet print computer drawing of rain Venice in the North Although Scotland and England may part company after this year’s referendum, their two national galleries have worked together to acquire Titian’s two great Diana mythological paintings for both countries to share equally. To put these late masterpieces into a wider 16th century context, this exhibition in Edinburgh ‘Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting’ ( Scottish National Gallery , from 22 March), will draw on the NGS’s extensive collection of Venetian paintings, drawings and prints. Besides Titian, the work of Lotto, Vecchio, Bassano, Tintoretto and Veronese will be included. Comparative and interpretative material will also be provided to enrich the visitor’s experience of this exceptionally creative era of Venetian art. Bill Hare And Down South . . . Meanwhile in London The National Gallery is staging ‘Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice’, the first UK solo show for the artist which augments the 10 paintings they own with 40 or so loans from Europe and America. Paolo Caliari from Verona was a brilliant colourist who excelled at sumptuous crowd and banqueting pictures and became the star painter (along with Tintoretto) of the post-Titian APRIL 2014 GALLERIES 11 from left: W illiam Kent ‘Design for the facade of Horse Guards facing East’ at Victoria & Albert Museum. Ugo da Carpi, ‘The Miraculous Draught of Fishes’, 1523-27 at Royal Academy of Arts