Around the World in 70 Minutes, Raphael Drawings

Back for the Around the World in 70 Minutes tour at the British Museum. Happy to say these volunteer docent tours are amplifying the pleasure the museum has to offer. Not only do you hear the details that bring an object and an era alive but the guides – all volunteers I am told – are on fire with enthusiasm. This spark illuminates what you are seeing in a way a dry text on a museum card cannot. They also walk very briskly.

This guide was really excited about the conservator’s recreation of the Sutton Hoo helmet’s ornamentation.

She marveled at an ornate gold buckle with myriad distinct animal figures, almost too small to see. How did they do it without magnification? Craftsmanship thrills her – me too.

When she asked if everyone was okay with viewing human remains, I muttered  ‘depends on how recent.’ That was my intro to the Lindow bog man who looked like a deflated human-shaped balloon, skin the color of tea, limbs twisted and floppy. For a 2,000-year-old corpse, he was in extraordinarily good condition. They could even tell his fingernails were manicured, which suggested he wasn’t a manual laborer.

This was a young man in his mid-twenties, in good health, and his last meal was barley bread cooked over a fire. He died from two blows to the skull, strangulation by garotte, and multiple broken ribs. The definition of overkill. Ritual sacrifice was suggested but I don’t know,  it seems personal to me, so maybe a jealous husband? As may be, RIP.

Afterward, I went in search of the Raphael exhibit in the print rooms. Side note: ff you are looking for peace and quiet when the rest of the museum has reached maximum cacophony this is the place to find it. It’s hushed and dimly lit to protect the fragile works on paper from the deteriorating effect of light.

Whilst ooking for Raphael, I found this lovely page of botany and bugs – oh, I miss my garden so much.

My impression of Raphael is he can be just a little bit too polished and sweet, but he won me over with this image of tenderness personified. Exquisitely done by silverpoint on pink prepared paper.

This lively sheet of sketches exploring different angles and gestures speaks to the artist in me.

This copy of Michelangelo’s David – you can see him reaching for muscularity and substance.

A self-possessed virgin. What a cooly assessing gaze.

Limping back to my hotel I saw this sundial and the time checked out. Of course, you need sun for it to work. Not something I’ve been able to count on in London.

A bit further on, I looked up and thought where am I? It’s not Vegas but it’s not the staid, gray London I remember either. It was the theater district, bringing the bling. Well done, you descents of Garrick and SIddons.

Soanes Museum, Parmigianino Reprise

John Soan (he added the e later) began as a bricklayer like his father before him, but his prodigious talent and his exceptional skills redefined his life.

Soane’s passion for neoclassical architecture formed the scaffolding of his life, but the reason I’m visiting the Soane Museum was his insatiable lust for collecting. Do we say hoarder? Maybe not, but every crevice, every wall, every opening, every corner, and every niche, whether vertical or horizontal, has got some artifact or collectible in it, placed by Soane himself to please himself.

I adored this goddess.

That said, my favorite aspect of the house-turned-museum is not the sculptures, artifacts, models, or paintings. It’s the way he understood the importance of light and the ingenious methods he designed to capture it.

It’s a skill well demonstrated by his breakfast room. That’s where he held meetings with potential clients, the better to impress them with morning light bounced around by four light-intensifying convex mirrors, smaller convex mirrors lining the insides of the arches, and hidden skylights pouring colored light into the room, which is also lit by a window overlooking the Monument Court.  

That said, my favorite fact about Soane is he married a woman with her own opinions, which he appreciated, and she had a little dog, Fanny, that she loved.

By all accounts, Soanes adored her and considered her his most valued confidante. After her death, he kept her rooms untouched for nearly two decades.

What don’t I like? The whole miserable, sordid story of his two sons. I don’t know what kind of father he was but they are on the record as bitter, angry, spiteful, and greedy. You can look up the whole wretched account if you like. I’m turning back to the light.

Fun facts:  The design of K6 phone box, the red public phone box we can still see on the streets of London was based on his design for his wife’s tomb.

He won the gold medal at the Royal Academy for a triumphant bridge he didn’t build.

Mad King George funded his Grand Tour.  

The cheerful yellow paint was originally made of two parts lead based pigments. Hold your breath.

The Picture Room is a puzzle of vertical spaces created to hang nire picture, much like those in the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston. Also walls become windows

The little dog settled so comfortably in Eliza’s lap was a Toy Manchester Terrier.

The abundant hair portrayed on Soane’s marble bust was a toupee.

After an extensive visit, that included an excellent staff-led tour of the museum, we took a breather In the lovely well-maintained park across the street. Em and I watched a group of frisky dogs chase balls across the grass. It was one of the best half hours of the trip.

I thought I’d be up for more art and went back to the Courtauld, but I tapped out after an hour peacefully sketching a Parmigianino drawing.

Westminster Abbey

A damp rainy morning and by some miracle, no line to speak of. Walked in and down the aisle, my head on a swivel to the left and right. It’s like picking your way through the attic of your powerful and wealthy grandmother, if your grandmother lived for over a thousand years and was venerated as a saint. It’s crammed with treasures, piled alongside, behind, beneath, and on top of each other. Marble effigies and mosaic floors, embroidered cushions and medieval paintings, stained glass and wood carving, and gilding and banners. Piety meets pageantry.

The distinguished and the holy are here, but also those with the cash and connections. Memorials commemorate those who are buried elsewhere.

The first time I looked down, I was standing on Darwin. Charles Darwin! Origin of the species, Voyage of the Beagle Darwin. The vary same Darwin who confessed he lost his faith in a benevolent God after witnessing parasitic wasp larvae devour a caterpillar from the inside out. I was equally delighted and shocked, and that moment set the tone for the day. Nor is he the only man of science honored here. Haley of the eponymous comet. Stephen Hawkins, with a depiction of a black hole. Sir Isaac Newton, with a bevy of putti frolicking at his feet.

All the while the velvet gravel of Jeremy Irons’s voice on the audio guide was murmuring cogent facts about the Abbey in my ears. That’s a lovely experience in and of itself.

Nobility, unless Shakespeare wrote about them, aren’t what thrills me. Writers and poets are another story. The bard has a fancy monument, as he should, but what was most deeply moving to me was finding the names of authors I loved in Poet’s Corner.

It’s a veritable Valhalla of writers. Miss Austen is here, and the Brontë sisters. Chaucer, Dickens, and the poet Gerald Manly Hopkins. Lewis Carrol, and C. S. Lewis, who opened the door into Narnia, humorist P.G. Wodehouse of Jeeves fame. Many more, but these are writers who shaped my worldview.

I hastened back to the entrance for the Verger tour (setting the alarm on my phone proved extremely useful). Got lost, was directed to go under the arches, and went the wrong way again. But seriously, under the arches? Look up. There’s nothing but arches. Fortunately, the staff had their eye on me. I was set on the right path and made it in time.

The verger was straight out of Hollywood casting, white-haired, twinkly-eyed, black-cassocked. He efficiently herded his flock from point to point and put the great and good into context with gentle humor.

Some highlights: mosaic was pilfered from King Edward the Confessor’s shine by pilgrims eager for a sanctified souvenir. They plucked the sides of his shrine bare.

It’s even more evident here, where mosaics are missing as high as guilty hands could reach, and intact above.

An unexpected thrill was being seated in the choir stalls, while the Verger explained the significance of who sits where, and the purpose of the elaborate screen that conceals the congregation from the celebrants.

After the tour ended I stayed several hours more, reading inscriptions and looking at faces.

I can tell you what all the inscriptions said in two words.

Remember me.

Courtauld Gallery + Tate Modern

The day began with a quick stop at Somerset House cafe, WatchHouse, for a flat white and, one of my happiest memories of Lisbon, a luscious Pastéis de Nata.

As soon as I entered the first gallery, it was love at first sight. Twenty-two works by Parmigianino. I was enchanted by how easy he makes it look, his economy of line, his sprezzatura.

The tenderness of gesture.

All this, and large magnifying glasses were available to see every mark distinctly. Heaven.

Tiepolo has that same innate bravura. Paint is his servant; loose without being sloppy. His virgins do not simper. This is a Virgin who knows what’s what. 

From triumphant to doomed. This portrait was a heartbreaker. A beauty, young and full of promise. But what does the museum card tell us?

George Romney painted this portrait around the
time Georgiana Peachy married the politician
Lord Greville… Georgiana died on
her first wedding anniversary, aged 19, a few
days after giving birth.

How grim is that?

Another woman whose life doesn’t turn out well as she’d hoped. Eve and a serpent who is more mirror than a reptile.

I’m glad I didn’t miss the photography exhibition in a small room off the stairs. Anthony Kersting’s Kurdistan in the 1940s, vintage photographs of a vanished world.

The expression of this monk. I see compassion, benevolence, and humor. Maybe it’s just the dimples, but I can believe he knows the secret to the meaning of life.

The skeptical gaze of the tribal girl.

From here I skedaddled to the maze of the Tate Modern for the cheese of the perpetually sold-out exhibit of Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of Life, by Yayoi Kusama. I arrived on time and chose one of the two queues at random. Thus I saw Chandeliers of Grief first, followed by Infinity Room, 19 minutes in each line, two minutes in the rooms. It reminded me of Nabokov’s line from Speak Memory, “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”
For me, it was worth it.

I’d booked the lunch that accompanied the exhibition, and Em met me there. Nice view and a fancy meal.

Food delivery was slow as the Troubador, but not as friendly. On the upside, they offer a super fancy delicious sober beverage.

We took an Uber boat back down the Thames to the Embankment. That turned out to be more of a romantic idea than an enjoyable experience. I was queasy from the stink of fuel and pitch and roll of what amounted to a river bus. Nevertheless, I’m glad to have given it a try. I may not have floated down the mighty Thames like the royal barges of yore, but I did get a river’s eye view of the city of London.

Cupid, You Little Rascal

A drizzly day of getting things sorted out. Emily took the laundry to a place that will give it back tomorrow. We went to the nearest post office for stamps and to mail a card, and upon leaving found ourselves in Covent Garden. We walked under a flower arch – my ideal photo op.

The Jubilee Market featured rows of tables selling vintage bits and bobs; silverware, beaded reticules, costume jewelry, and, befitting season 2 of Bridgerton, an ivory dance card. It had a high-end Estate Sale vibe. I bought a commemorative coin for a friend and Em found a ring she liked.

Picked up a baguette from le Pain Quotidian. We got takeout Thai coconut soup and I popped what I thought was a baby carrot in my mouth. Wrong. A hotter than the surface of the sun pepper. I spit it out but not before a few vigorous chews ignited the inside of my mouth and burned like holy hellfire. Yikes.

After a restorative nap, I trotted over to the National and stopped in front of this painting of Venus at her toilet.

I noticed not only the luscious pearl earring held aloft in Cupid’s fingers, but precisely how it corresponds to Venus’s anatomy.

Was it intended as a pictorial guide for the fumbling males of the aristocracy? I know it was not placed there by accident. I could argue it’s the intentional focus of the entire work. Welcome to the Devil’s doorbell, gentlemen. I’ll leave it there.

This man has a stern expression, but it’s completely at odds with the small dog gazing up at him worshipfully, wearing a jaunty red bow. And are those bells on his collar?

Just before I left for the day. I watched the media installation by Kehinde Wiley, Prelude, 2021: a six-channel digital film shot in Norway of black men and women in snowy fjords. They traipsed through a frigid glacial landscape pelted with snowflakes – a compelling metaphor for living as a black person in a world controlled mainly by whites. “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”
I’m still thinking about it.

Consider Eternity

I held onto Emily’s arm and she got me through the streets and into the tube and out again safely, explaining as we went her hacks for keeping Google maps up even underground, and ways to double-check the different lines to make sure you’re going the right way.

London streets were shut down for a marathon so we changed our plans. Instead of returning to the V&A, we went to Brompton Cemetery.

It was a beautiful sunny day. The turf was starred with daisies and spangled with grape hyacinths. Daffodils were everywhere. I dawdled down different paths and read inscriptions and let the sweet melancholy and peace seep in.

All the stones monuments and statuary lean as if they are on the billows of a wave. Many inscriptions are lost to the depredations of time and weather. We took our time.

We spent a couple of hours wandering down the path and around the graves. The words on the stones are a kind of shorthand, haikus packed with grief and pain and appreciation, pleas for mercy instead of judgment, and sometimes a glimpse of deep attachment and love. You know a child was cherished when his parents call him their darling little sputnik.

There were the usual complements of angels, standing guard over the souls of the departed.

Many headstones were in the shape of open books. I love this.

Truly it was an exceptionally peaceful morning. If you haven’t been there, I recommend it.

Afterward, Emily looked up somewhere for lunch nearby via Google. The first prospect was too small and crowded, the second had a notice on the door that the kitchen was unexpectedly closed, but the third was just right. The Goldilocks option.

Inside The Troubadour, a long-time music venue, it was weathered and intimate, with a decor of memorabilia. Perfect for my daughter who’s in the band Dehd. Did you know their single ‘Bad Love’ is #1 on SIRIUS XMU? Now you do. Just sayin’.

Instruments hung from the ceiling and the music was from the seventies – Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. It’s what all the photographers were playing back in the day when I lived and worked in London. It was like being inside a time capsule. All this and poached eggs, streaky bacon, sourdough toast, and a mocha. The service wasn’t fast but it was friendly. I needed the rest.

We returned to the hotel the way we came.  I was barely limping. She went back to her hotel for a nap and some quiet time to draw, I took a nap and worked on my blog. A fine day.