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Ars Memoriae Vincit Oblivionem

Month: November 2023

  • The Guild Church of St Katharine Cree, City of London

    The Guild Church of St Katharine Cree, 86 Leadenhall Street, City of London

    The Guild Church of St Katharine Cree, 86 Leadenhall Street, City of London
    The Guild Church of St Katharine Cree, 86 Leadenhall Street, City of London

    St Katharine Cree, whose origins go back to the thirteenth century, is among the most distinctive survivals of London’s early seventeenth-century ecclesiastical architecture. The present building was completed in 1633, during the reign of Charles I, and is notable as one of the few City churches constructed before the Great Fire of 1666, which it survived intact. Subsequent restorations in the late nineteenth century and after the Second World War have left much of its Jacobean fabric intact, making it a rare witness to a transitional moment in English church design.

    The name ‘Cree’ derives from ‘Christchurch’, a twelfth-century priory beside which the church was first established. It became a separate parish in the early fifteenth century, and by the late 1620s the medieval structure was judged inadequate. The rebuilding, undertaken between 1628 and 1630, preserved only the late Gothic tower of 1504. Its consecration in 1631 was presided over by Bishop William Laud, then Bishop of London, later Archbishop of Canterbury, whose strong advocacy of ceremonial worship and church ornament gave the dedication a pointed significance. Laud’s policies, aligned with Charles I but bitterly opposed by Puritans, contributed to his impeachment and execution in 1645.

    The church’s architecture exemplifies the uneasy balance between continuity and innovation in early Stuart London. Externally, the building retains much of a Tudor character, but the interior introduces classical elements that speak to Renaissance influence. The nave is articulated with Corinthian columns supporting rounded arches, while the ceiling, flat but ribbed and enriched with bosses, consciously evokes late medieval precedents. The east window, modelled in part on that of Old St Paul’s Cathedral, forms an ambitious statement of continuity with the great Gothic tradition, even as the Classical porch and distinctive tracery reveal new stylistic currents.

    Inside, the furnishings underscore this blend of tradition and experiment. The font dates from the mid-seventeenth century, while stained glass depicting the Catherine wheel commemorates the martyrdom of St Katharine of Alexandria, the church’s dedicatee. The organ has an illustrious musical heritage, associated with performances by Handel and Purcell, and underlines the church’s role in the cultural as well as the spiritual life of the City.

  • Catalan Romanesque school, Saint Philip, Saint Jude and Saint Bartholomew, c.1150–1170

    Catalan Romanesque school, Saint Philip, Saint Jude and Saint Bartholomew, c.1150–1170
    Limestone relief, H. 80 cm, W. 63 cm, Medieval Galleries, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

    Catalan Romanesque school, Saint Philip, Saint Jude and Saint Bartholomew, c.1150–1170
    Limestone relief, H. 80 cm, W. 63 cm, Medieval Galleries, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

    This limestone relief, originally part of an apostolic frieze from the Cathedral of Sant Pere in Vic (Catalonia), depicts Saints Philip, Jude, and Bartholomew. Once painted in vivid polychromy, the figures were designed to flank the cathedral’s entrance, proclaiming the authority of the apostles and their role in spreading the Christian message. Inscriptions on the books they hold identify them clearly, reflecting the pastoral concern that sacred images be legible to the faithful. The relief once formed part of a wider cycle of the apostles, fragments of which are now dispersed among several collections.

    The style of the work is characteristic of Catalan Romanesque sculpture in the mid-12th century: hieratic, rigidly frontal figures with schematic drapery and an emphasis on abstract pattern rather than bodily realism. Such a vocabulary distinguished Romanesque religious imagery from classical naturalism, favouring instead a symbolic clarity that stressed divine authority and spiritual order over earthly individuality. The figures’ impassive severity, at times likened to idols, reflects a deliberate aesthetic choice in which biblical narratives were refracted through local traditions of visual abstraction.

    The cultural context of 12th-century Catalonia helps to explain this idiom. The region, a frontier of Christian expansion during the Reconquista and simultaneously a zone of Mediterranean exchange, developed a distinctive Romanesque culture that drew upon diverse sources. Vic, an episcopal centre, lay within a network of monasteries and cathedrals that fostered ambitious architectural and sculptural programmes, often supported by the patronage of local nobility. Workshops in Catalonia were receptive both to Italian models—visible in the carving of capitals and portals—and to northern influences transmitted along pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela.

    Thus, this relief encapsulates the hybrid quality of Catalan Romanesque art: provincial yet cosmopolitan, rooted in local devotional traditions yet engaged with wider European artistic currents. Its abstracted forms bear witness to an era when sculpture served not as an imitation of nature but as a symbolic language of faith, preparing the ground for the more individualised and naturalistic tendencies of Gothic art in the later 12th and 13th centuries.

  • Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619), ‘Self-portrait, aged 30,’ 1577

    Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619), Self-portrait, aged 30, 1577, Watercolour on vellum, 41 mm, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

    Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619), Self-portrait, aged 30, 1577, Watercolour on vellum, 41 mm, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

    This miniature portrait, created during the artist’s stay in France between 1576 and 1578, reflects the elevated status enjoyed by artists at the Valois court. It contrasts sharply with their relatively modest position in Tudor England, where painters were seldom regarded as members of the royal entourage. Hilliard presents himself not as a mere craftsman but as an intellectual and gentleman, aspiring to the standing held by his counterparts at the Valois and Habsburg courts.

    Upon his return to England, Hilliard’s situation changed markedly. Stripped of the distinction he had experienced abroad, he found himself reduced to the role of an ordinary craftsman. His efforts to secure lasting favour at the Tudor and later Stuart courts met with considerable difficulty, and only in the latter stages of his life did conditions shift. The arrival of leading foreign artists in London began to alter perceptions, gradually raising the painter’s place in society.

    Hilliard’s portraiture encompassed a wide range of sitters, from royalty to explorers and members of the emerging middle class. This self-portrait, together with contemporary miniatures of his wife and father, ranks among the finest examples of early English portraiture.

    The work offers a rare glimpse into Hilliard’s own self-image at a crucial point in his career. It also illustrates the broader development of painting in England, as it evolved from a craft to a discipline increasingly aligned with the liberal arts.

  • Unidentified Lombard masters, c.1780–1790, A Music Room

    Unidentified Lombard masters, c.1780–1790, A Music Room (reconstructed), Victoria and Albert Museum, London

    Unidentified Lombard masters, c.1780–1790, A Music Room (reconstructed), Victoria and Albert Museum, London
    Unidentified Lombard masters, c.1780–1790, A Music Room (reconstructed), Victoria and Albert Museum, London

    This elaborate interior, reconstructed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, derives from a Lombard palazzo but entered the art market without documentation of its original site or the names of the artisans responsible. Its provenance, obscured by nineteenth-century dealings, has made it difficult to place within the history of Milanese or wider Lombard domestic architecture. Detached from its setting, the ensemble nonetheless exemplifies the decorative ambitions of late eighteenth-century interiors in northern Italy.

    The room is oval in plan and distinguished by carved, painted, and gilded wooden panelling. Mirrored walls and a shallow domed ceiling heighten the effect of light and spatial extension, while the parquetry floor is laid out in intricate geometric patterns. Each door is given a distinct ornamental scheme, and trophies of music, love, the arts, and warfare punctuate the decoration. The ceiling, now clad with mirrored panels, was adapted during the reconstruction to suggest the reflective surfaces that would have been integral to the original design.

    In stylistic terms the ensemble stands at the intersection of Rococo and Neoclassicism. The fluent carving, lightness of detail, and play with mirrored surfaces recall the ornamental idioms of Rococo, while the trophies, the geometric floor, and the disciplined organisation of panels reflect the clarity and restraint associated with emerging Neoclassical taste. Such hybrids were characteristic of Lombard interiors of the 1780s, shaped by both local craftsmanship and the broader European exchange of decorative models.

  • Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–1789), Dutch Girl at Breakfast, c.1756

    Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–1789), Dutch Girl at Breakfast, c.1756, Oil on canvas, 46.8 × 39 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (on short-term loan to the National Gallery, London)

    Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–1789), Dutch Girl at Breakfast, c.1756, Oil on canvas, 46.8 × 39 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (on short-term loan to the National Gallery, London)

    Jean-Étienne Liotard, the Genevan painter better known as le peintre turc, was one of the most distinctive artistic personalities of the eighteenth century. Famous for wearing an Ottoman caftan and long beard, he cultivated an eccentric public image that matched his independence of style. Though celebrated primarily for his luminous pastels, he also produced a small number of oils, among which Dutch Girl at Breakfast holds a special place.

    The painting portrays a young woman delicately lifting the lid of a coffee pot, her gesture quiet yet deliberate. The subject points to the growing allure of coffee as an exotic and costly commodity in mid-eighteenth-century Europe, while the calm domestic setting evokes seventeenth-century Dutch interiors. Liotard adopts the clarity, intimacy, and close observation of Vermeer (1632–1675), Pieter de Hooch (1629–1684), and Caspar Netscher (1639–1684), while tempering it with the polish and lightness associated with French Rococo taste. The resulting blend is at once archaic in its homage and modern in its restraint.

    The framed picture on the back wall, plausibly derived from Hendrick Cornelisz van Vliet’s (1611–1675) church interiors, suggests a more specific link with Delft. The Rijksmuseum has proposed that Liotard’s brief stay there, where his cousin served as pastor of the Huguenot church, may have provided the occasion for the work. Such quotations reveal his conscious dialogue with Dutch pictorial traditions, underscoring his role as a cosmopolitan mediator of artistic lineages.

    Liotard prized this canvas, retaining it in his possession for nearly two decades before it was acquired by William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough (1704–1793). After remaining in Britain for over two centuries, it was purchased by the Rijksmuseum at Sotheby’s in London in 2017.