Breakfast in Napoli, lunch in Rome, dinner in Cambridge. Late night silverpoint after Van Eyck. Enjoyed reading most of Tolstoy's What is Art? whilst travelling. A great deal to reflect on. Listening to Mary Beard's Pompeii - The life of a Roman town whilst drawing.
Pompeii. So many lives. People on train, casts of dead bodies, friends. Shared experience the only connection, everything else inscrutable, fabricated, interpreted, filtered.
Napoli. Archeological museum and colossal Hercules. Paintings from Pompeii. Beautiful materials on display, porphyry and marble, grey marble, variegated marble. Mosaics.
Palazzo Doria Pamphilj. Privately owned collection of master artists. Raphael, Bruegel, Filippo Lippi, Parmigianino, Titian, Velázquez. Devalues when there is so much in a single family's hands. Hedonic treadmill. Nothing is enough.
Borghese gallery. Bernini, Cannova, Raphael, Botticelli. A silverpoint by the Master of the Pala Sforzesca, which I have started a copy of tonight. Feeling spoilt by such an abundance of high quality art. Love recognising artists by their style, remembering their other works in other museums. Hermaphroditus at the Louvre. Yesterday an Old fisherman sculpture in the Vatican, also in the Louvre. Francesco Francia's St Francis from the Met made an appearance at the Borghese today. Perugino's squared oval heads. Raphael's women seen from behind looking into the picture.
- Parmigianino and Correggio exhibition
- Chronological, excellent to see bad early work. There is hope!
- Reproductions are so far from the originals
Travelled from Suffolk to Rome. No time to do a proper drawing. Silverpoint copy late at night, many elementary errors.