pumpkinstrokemarrow

Yesterday for our second and last visit to the Canalettos & etc at the National Gallery. Mostly very good stuff, although I was not so keen on the large paintings of ceremonies. But it did seem odd that the Venetians were clearly spending a fortune on fancy dress at a time when the Serene Republic was in terminal decline. Although, as BH pointed out, the fancy dress was probably carried over from one year to the next, much in the way as they do now for town carnivals in the west country.

I had not realised, although I suppose I should have, how many liberties these painters took with the views that they were painting. Not very photographic at all.

Curious the way that my mood changed between the first and second visits. Some paintings that I had really liked on my first visit I was not so keen on on the second and vice-versa. With the early 'The Piazza San Marco, looking East' being in the first category and 'The Campo Santa Maria Formosa' being in the second. I also decided that if I were a rich man, while some of the Guardis were great on first acquaintance, they would not wear as well on the wall as the more sober Canalettos.

I learn incidentally that Maria Formosa translates as voluptuous Mary. Does this have anything to do with the island off China?

None of them seemed to reproduce very well. While the pictures in the book of the exhibition serve as mementoes, an awful lot is lost. I wonder what sort of a job those reproduction artists from mainland China would do?

And most of them needed to be looked at from the right distance, not always easy in a crowded special exhibition. Not very flexible in that regard. The book of the exhibition suggesting that this might have been the result of some at least of the painters starting out as painters of scenes for theatres. Scenes designed to be looked at from a known position.

Slightly sobered by the thought that this was the last time that I shall see most of the pictures on show, with a good proportion of them vanishing back into private collections. Although I suppose if one was keen, one could probably wangle a private view by suitable private approach. Not going to happen though.

Interested by an African lady on the tube on the way home. Thick, deep green cloth wrapped around her head and draped around the upper half of her body. No hair or ears to be seen. But the lower half of her body was wrapped in some very fancy & flimsy light green material. Different rules appearing to apply to the upper and lower halves - rules perhaps set out in the devotional text she appeared to be reading. Cheaply produced paperback in her native tongue with dollops of arabic thrown in. Her daughter, maybe seven or eight, was more soberly dressed with black lower half. Her son, so the daughter solemnly informed me, was one year and seven months old. He and his buggy were entirely conventional.

I also discovered during the course of the day that you can buy a whisky for around £50 a bottle which answers to the description: 'a combination of flavours from vanilla-rich bourbon casks and two years in Oloroso sherry casks. Tastes like Pedro Ximinez sherry drizzled on good vanilla ice cream'. I must have stunted taste buds because I can never taste this sort of thing in the sort of thing that I drink. But it did make me wonder whether it would not be simpler just to buy some sherry and vanilla ice cream. Alternatively you can buy not more than two bottles of 'another release matured in ex-bourbon casks which has a richer, deeper palate than the 1997 with bananas, raisins, apples and lots of toffee-ish vanilla. A delicious easy-drinker with so many appealing characteristics'.