Resources & Recommendations #15
to listen
For those that need more persuading around London’s two ongoing exhibitions spotlighting Renaissance drawings, listen on. Ben Luke talks to Martin Clayton, Head of Prints and Drawings at the Royal Collection Trust, about the show for the Art Newspaper. Luke also talks to Julien Domercq, a curator at the Royal Academy, about the year 1504, and the remarkable crucible of creativity when Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael were all in Florence.
to watch
An interview with Frank Auerbach | The Charcoal Heads
In an increasingly poignant film released earlier this year to celebrate ‘Frank Auerbach. The Charcoal Heads’, at the Courtauld Gallery the artist reflected on his life and artistic practice. During his early years as a young artist in post-war London, Auerbach produced one of his most remarkable bodies of work: a series of large-scale portrait heads made in charcoal. Auerbach spent months on each drawing, working and reworking them during numerous sessions with his sitters.
to read
Unlocking the English Portrait Miniature
This month’s recommendation is less of a read and more of a tool. This new platform dedicated to the close examination of portrait miniatures in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, is the first of its kind. As the website states: ‘the resource offers the opportunity to study a large number of miniature portraits of men and women of a previous age in greater detail than has ever before been possible. Unlock for yourself centuries old secrets surrounding the sitters, the artists, the materials used and more.’
