Masterpieces at the Queen’s Gallery Holyrood, Edinburgh
Posted in Art, Edinburgh, Exhibitions at 12:00 on 30 June 2022
Last September we visited the Queen’s Gallery by Holyrood Palace. On that visit the facility was offered to convert the attendance ticket to one that allowed entry for a year.
Accordingly last week we took the opportunity to take in the latest exhibition there, Masterpieces from Buckingham Place, currently on view until Sep 25. Each of the pictures was captioned with the identity of the King, Queen or Prince who purchased it. Some of the paintings below appear on the Art UK website, others I photographed myself (allowed as long as no flash was used)
Given his fate it is somewhat ironic that Judith with the Head of Holofernes, painted by Cristofano Allori (1577-1621,) was bought by Charles I. Judith’s face in this painting looks remarkably modern to me:-
Artemisia Gentileschi (Rome 1593-Naples 1652) Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura.):-
Andrea del Sarto (Florence 1486-Florence 1530) Portrait of a Woman in Yellow:-
Rembrandt van Rijn (Leiden 1606-Amsterdam 1669) Agatha Bas (1611-1658):-
One of the most striking paintings of light in the exhibition was in this other Rembrandt, Christ and St Mary Magdalene at the Tomb. My photograph fails to do it justice:-
Parmigianini (1503 – 1540) Pallas Athene. For some reason this reminded me of the cyclist Laura (Trott) Kenny. Unfortunately my photograph has a reflection of the Gallery’s central light fitting:-
Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675) Seascape with Jonah and the Whale. There is a lightning flash across the upper part of this picture of which I tried to take a close-up, but it didn’t come out:-
Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682) Evening Landscape, A Windmill by a Stream:-
The information card for the above says “a single figure swathed in black walks away from us.” Examining the picture closely two (female) figures can clearly be seen behind the black swathed one! They are brilliantly conjured up too, with just a few dabs of paint. How could the writer of the description have failed to notice them? (Is it perhaps because they are clearly women?)
There is a virtual tour of the exhibition here.