Another Ravensburger Premium, with the same good feel to the pieces as the last. Not quite such a snug fit, but snug enough that one was never in doubt about whether two pieces had been correctly fitted together or not.
An interesting painting and an interesting jigsaw, the first that I have done without any clear strategy or direction about the solution. Did the edge in the usual way and then thought that the landscape top right was the place to go and managed a bit of that. Then did most of the yellow robe of the kneeling figure front centre. Then dotted about, gradually getting through the puzzle but without doing one thing, then another. Just sort of muddled through; all very odd. And then there were plenty of pieces which looked as if they ought to be easy to find but proved difficult - and then when one found them it turned out one was looking for the wrong thing. That one thought one was looking for the last piece of yellow robe when more careful inspection revealed that one should have been looking for a mostly blue piece. Very easy to jump to the wrong conclusions in this business.
Yesterday off to inspect the real thing at the National Gallery.
Started at the station a lucky find of 300g of every day value bacon which had found its way onto the pavement opposite the new Tesco's being fitted out next to the new booking hall for Epsom Station. The packet appeared to be entire and is now in our fridge awaiting further action. The slices might possibly come from more than one pig, although that would depend on exactly how the presumably automated slicer coped with end of pig. But I think we can be reasonably sure that slices of bacon, even every day value bacon, do not involve horse.
Then onto an easier Bullingdon than on the last occasion, picking one up at Vauxhall and being able to drop it off behind the National Gallery, Cockspur Street being full again - but behind the National Gallery even better. A journey which took 18 minutes and which demonstrated that the Bullingdon people are still putting up journey details for inspection, despite my suspicions last time around.
Got into the Gallery and selected just the right trustess to tell me where Foppa lived. She sank into deep thought and then announced that he was in the Sainsbury Wing. More deep thought and then announced that he was in Room 55. Still more deep thought and his first name was probably Vincenzo. And she was right on all three counts.
A large and impressive picture, if a little shabby. Interested to find that the golden crowns and such like were some sort of appliqué. Very thick gold stuff; maybe it really was gold. But I was annoyed to find that the jigsaw has chopped off the top foot or so of the picture, a top foot which made clear that the stable was a ruin, a symbol of the ruin of classical civilisation in the face of the advance of the Christians, or so I was informed by the label. Rather less trimming on the other three sides, but the overall effect was that the composition of the jigsaw was badly damaged. One might have thought that the National Custodian of such matters would enforce a bit more accuracy in jigsaws sold under its banner.
I am not sure if Foppa counted as a Pre-Raphaelite, with Raphael being a contempory, but he seemed to share the Pre-Raphaelite love of naturalistic details. For example, the large number of animals and birds scattered about the odd corners of this picture. But it was quite startling to move to the 'Virgin of the Rocks' in a nearby room, where the treatment of the Virgin's face by Leonardo is in a different league to that of Foppa, his near contemporary. On the way, I was rather taken with an Annunciation by Crivelli, another picture with some odd details, for example what looks like a short fat cucumber sitting on the ledge at the front of the picture. I decided that a lot of these chaps might have been painting religious subjects for religious patrons but were perhaps not terribly solemn about it themselves. But then, that might be the lack of solemnity that true believers and papists allow themselves, unlike us atheists. I think George Eliot may have done a cameo on the subject. All that being as it may, I did like the Annunciation.
A good light lunch at the nearby Terroirs (http://terroirswinebar.com/).Posh sardines on toast. Generous supply of good bread. Good house red and an even better pudding wine (a 2009 Jurançon) to go with the lady of uncertain morals from Chile (a rather fine pudding).
PS: checking up on Saint Valentine today, I find that he is not a proper saint at all, having been demoted in the Holy Cull of the sixties of the last century. This on the authority of Google because he is mentioned in neither our Chambers Encylcopedia nor my fine, 12 volume 'New Library of Catholic Knowledge' from Burns & Oates. But I was pleased to see that the front and end pieces of all 12 volumes of the Library are reproductions of the Christmas Special jigsaw, as recorded on 1st January. Oddly, Valentine has survived in the calendar of our Book of Common Prayer, perhaps because this last is still in its original form, untouched by aforementioned Cull.
No comments:
Post a Comment