A C. T U. A L. L Y

On June 7 my husband, two friends visiting from the States, and I went to the Gemäldegalerie to see David Hockney Landscapes in Dialog .   The exhibition was intimate, hung in one large room and a smaller anteroom, and beautifully curated.   On display in the large room were 18-20 landscapes from various periods and artists; just off this room were four large-scale paintings by Hockney of three trees, each painting depicted from the same point of view in each of the four seasons.   The Hockneys were on loan from the Würth Collection; the other landscapes were assembled from several national museums in Berlin. From the Gemäldegalerie website : David Hockney is considered one of the most influential artists of our time. In his large-format seasonal series Three Trees near Thixendale (2007/2008) from the Würth Collection, Hockney observes the atmospheric seasonal changes of nature in Britain, where he grew up. This exhibition will present Hockney’s work alongside sele...

When the dragon of despair needs to be slain, nobody slays it better than Donatello, the Renaissance , sponsored by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Musei del Bargello in Florence. We saw the show in late May with friends visiting from San Francisco, and it is definitely a do-not-miss. Before seeing this comprehensive exhibition, my knowledge of Donatello (1386-1466) was limited to his bronze David Victorious (1408-1409), below.    I first saw this sculpture in a Fine Arts 13 slide lecture at Harvard in 1967, but it wasn’t until 1984 that I saw the original at the Bargello.   Because of its rather fussy treatment of the young boy who defeated Goliath with a sling shot, (I remember Professor Janson called it “effeminate”),  I somehow always thought of Donatello as an artist of the fussy Baroque Period.   In fact, he was at the forefront of the Italian Renaissance and his influence on other Renaissance masters is formidable. Here is a description of th...