– From Medieval to Modern –
The National Gallery: Paintings, People, Portraits is a bicentennial celebration of the National Gallery’s picture collection.
Since it was established in 1824, the National Gallery has become a beacon for London’s visitors and residents alike. From its inception in John Julius Angerstein’s home in Mayfair to its current home in Trafalgar Square, it has expanded both its collection and its footprint to become one of the world’s leading galleries. This book features photographic portraits by David Dawson and Mary McCartney in addition to photography of the Gallery by Massimo Listri. It brings together over 200 of the Gallery’s paintings, which were made between the 13th and 20th centuries, including memorable masterpieces from both the famous and the forgotten.
These pages tell the history of painting in the Western European tradition through the National Gallery’s collection. You’ll go on a visual journey through the centuries, with works by Duccio, Van Eyck, Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, Vigée Le Brun, Gainsborough, Morisot, and Matisse, to name just a few.
Punctuating this story are contributions by and photographic portraits of 25 cultural figures, such as Frank Auerbach, Alvaro Barrington, Edward Enninful, David Hockney, Kim Jones, Damian Lewis, Sahara Longe, Chris Ofili, Ai Weiwei, Rachel Whiteread, Annabelle Selldorf, and Flora Yukhnovich, among others.
The art piece Damian chose to write about is Diana and Actaeon by Titian, an oil on canvas made from 1556-1559.
An overview about the work: While hunting, Actaeon accidentally stumbles upon the secret bathing place of Diana, chaste goddess of the hunt, and sees her naked. His fate is foretold by the stag’s skull on the plinth and the skins of Diana’s former prey hanging above her head. The conclusion of the story is shown in another painting by Titian in the National Gallery, The Death of Actaeon. The outraged goddess changes Actaeon into a stag to be torn apart by his own hounds.
The paintings were part of a famous series of mythological pictures made for King Philip II of Spain when Titian was at the height of his powers. Works of unprecedented beauty and inventiveness, their subjects were mostly based on the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses – Titian himself referred to them as ‘poesie’ (poems). Diana and Actaeon was designed to be hung together with Diana and Callisto (co-owned by the National Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland) – their landscape backgrounds and the stream in their foregrounds appear to be continuous.
You can view Diana and Actaeon in Room 8 of the National Gallery.
