An exciting discovery was made in 1989 when the painting was examined by infra-red reflectography. Under the plum-coloured drapery across the Child’s legs is an underdrawing, which can convincingly be attributed to Duccio himself and whoseindividual characteristics can be recognised also in panels from Duccio’s (see nextMaestàpage). The abrupt, emphatic lines are sketched with a slightly scratchy quill, whosesplit nib creates a double contour clearly visible when magnified (fig. 1).

duccio di buoninsegna 1278 1318 19(active –died / )

The Annunciation 1311

Tempera on poplar, cm43 44 ng 1139

This small panel and the other two pictures by the artist hanging nearby, Jesus opens theEyes of a Man born Blind Transfigurationand the , come from the predella of a huge double-sided altarpiece painted in Duccio’s workshop and carried from there in triumph tothe high altar of Siena Cathedral in 1311. Most of it survives in the Siena Cathedralmuseum, although after the complex structure was dismantled and sawn apart in 1771 some of the panels were lost and others, such as those in the National Gallery, sold abroad. The predella, a box-like supporting structure under the main panel, was,like the whole altarpiece, painted on both the front and the back. The front of the

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millstone around her neck. Their combined presence may point to Duccio’s patronhaving been the Dominican Niccolò da Prato, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia (died 1321).

A luxury object such as this would not have been available to everybody. TheVirgin’s brilliant blue robe, for example, is painted in the best ultramarine, a mineralextracted from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli, whose only source at the time wasfrom quarries in Afghanistan, and which was more expensive than pure gold. Duccio,however, tempers sumptuousness with tenderness in the relationship of Mother andChild, and his modelling is more naturalistic than that of Margarito a generation earlier.The green undermodelling of the Virgin’s face now shows through more than it wouldhave done originally.

42 Paintings 1250–1500

Fig. 1 Infra-red reflectogram ofDuccio’s .Virgin and Child with SaintsDetail showing the quill-penunderdrawing of the Child’s drapery.

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Paintings 1500–1600the west w ing

Provinces, and he was quickly appointed official painter to the Regents of the SouthernNetherlands, the Archduke Albert and the Archduchess Isabella, with leave to remaindomiciled in Antwerp. He was never to return to Italy, although he was irrevocablymarked by his study of Ancient Greco-Roman and Italian Renaissance art. In Antwerphe proceeded to work towards the reconstruction of his war-torn country and to establish himself as a leading figure in its artistic and intellectual life.

One of his closest friends and patrons at this time was the wealthy and influentialalderman Nicolaas Rockocx, for whom Rubens painted to hang in aSamson and Delilahprominent position over the mantelpiece of his ‘great saloon’ in Antwerp. When thepicture was hung at its original height of just over two metres some years ago in anexhibition at the National Gallery, it became clear how nicely Rubens had calculatedthe angle of vision. The surface of Delilah’s bed receded to a properly horizontal plane,with the space of the room leading convincingly back to the wall and the door through which the Philistine soldiers enter to capture the hapless Jewishhero. To the multiple light sources in this room, for which Rubens was indebted to hisfriend Elsheimer (page 115) – the flaming brazier, the candle held by the old procuressand the torch of the Philistines – we must add in our mind’s eye a fire blazing in thefireplace below, highlighting the saffron satin throw behind Delilah and the patternedOriental rug, and casting warm reflections in the shadows of the skin tones and the

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shaded by the hat brim, as are the coarser hatching in the background and the talleroutline of the hat originally sketched in by Rubens. White highlights and red and darkshadows were then added over the flesh colour on nose, cheeks, chin, neck and breasts.

Equally rapid and effective is the treatment of Susanna’s hair, stray wisps paintedwith the tip of the brush or scratched with the point of the handle. The fluent handlingextends to her costume, especially in the dashing ostrich feathers and the splendidremovable red sleeves, attached to the bodice with ribboned gold-tipped laces, whosebold colour echoes and concentrates the warm blush of lips, nostrils and eyelids.

peter paul rubens 1577 1640( – )

Samson and Delilah about –1609 10

Oil on wood, cm185 205 ng 6461

In 1608 Rubens hastily returned home to Antwerp after an absence of eight years inItaly, in a vain attempt to reach the bedside of his dying mother. His arrival in the cityvirtually coincided with the truce between Spanish Flanders and the Dutch United

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The illustrates the cycle of life, from the bud, through maturity and death.SunflowersThe spiky or gnarled forms of nature also symbolised human passions to Van Gogh,although it would be wrong to see evidence here, as many people have, of artistic‘frenzy’. The luminous sunflowers look extremely lifelike, their raised dabbed-ontexture – made possible by the stiff consistency of the new machine-ground paintsavailable to nineteenth-century artists – carefully controlled to mimic bristling seed-heads and hairy green sepals, vigorous longer brushstrokes flowing to match thedirection of the petals, leaves and stems. As if in contrast to these natural forms, thetable top and vase are simplified, flattened and outlined, recalling crude popularprints, and Van Gogh’s signature, ‘Vincent’, becomes a naive blue decoration in theglaze of the Provençal terracotta jar.

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in Amsterdam) is an ‘armchair, red and green night effect…on the seat two novels anda candle’. The motif of chairs may have been suggested to him by Luke Fildes’sengraving , Charles Dickens’s chair drawn on the day of theThe Empty Chair – Gad’s Hillwriter’s death.

Gauguin advocated painting from the imagination, starting with an idea – nourishedby literature – then seeking pictorial form for it. Van Gogh’s exemplifies his Chairown inspiration: a simple rustic seat of natural materials, seen by daylight in ‘Japaneseperspective’ with sprouting bulbs behind it suggesting natural growth. But a darkerassociation may also brood over this picture ‘in light colour’. In seventeenth-centuryDutch art, as Van Gogh would have known, pipe smoking was a symbol of transience,illustrating a verse from that Good Book with which he was also very familiar: ‘Hear myprayer, O Lord. . . For my days are consumed like smoke. . .’ (Psalm 102:1–3).

vincent van gogh 1853 1890( – )

Sunflowers 1888

Oil on canvas, cm92 73 ng 3863

In the summer before Gauguin’s arrival in Arles, Van Gogh began to paint a series ofpictures of sunflowers as a decoration for his house, which he hoped to share with ‘thenew poet [who will be] living here’. Gauguin, in Van Gogh’s words, was ‘mad about mysunflowers’, and portrayed him at his easel painting them; of all the artist’s works, theyare the most popular and the most widely reproduced. He painted four canvases in allbefore the flowers faded, but considered only two good enough to sign and to hang in Gauguin’s bedroom. The Gallery’s picture is one of these two signed paintings; the other is now in Munich. They were among the few works which Van Gogh feltconfident enough to select for exhibition, and were shown, and admired, in Brussels inNovember 1889. ‘To get up enough heat to melt those golds. . . it’s not everyone thatcan do it, it takes the energy and concentration of a person’s whole being. . .’ Vincenthad written to his brother Theo.

The London is the first successful example of Van Gogh’s ‘light on light’Sunflowerstechnique, perhaps indebted to the experiments in one-colour painting pursued in1887 in Paris by his fellow student, Louis Anquetin. Its predominant yellow hue – forVan Gogh an emblem of happiness – is also a tribute to Provence, and to the contem-porary Provençal painter Monticelli, who ‘depicted the south [of France] all in yellow,all in orange, all in sulphur’.

In January 1889, however, Van Gogh painted three ‘absolutely equal and identicalcopies’, with the intention of showing copies and originals as side panels to versions ofhis portrait of Mme Roulin, wife of his friend the Arles postman. The red-haired MmeRoulin is painted in violent shades of green and red holding the strings of a baby’scradle. ‘I imagine these canvases [the portraits] between those of the Sunflowers,which would thus form lampholders or candelabras of the same size. . . And then the yellow and orange tones of the head will gain in brilliance by the proximity of theyellow wings.’

Thus Van Gogh’s interest in colour, while grounded in nature, differed from that of the Impressionists by extending also to decorative combinations, in which the hues of one painting intensified those of others, at the same time modifying theiroriginal significance.

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with a quotation from Thomas Campbell’s poem : ‘The flag whichYe Mariners of Englandbraved the battle and the breeze/ No longer owns her.’ The had distinguishedTemeraireherself at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, but by the 1830s the veteran warships of theNapoleonic wars were being replaced by steamships. Turner, on an excursion on theThames, encountered the old ship, sold out of the service, being towed from Sheernessto Rotherhithe to be scrapped. In his painting topography and shipbuilding alike aremanipulated to symbolic and pictorial ends. Turner conceives the scene as a modernClaude: a ghostly and the squat black tug, belching fire and soot, against a luridTemerairesunset. His technique is very different from Claude’s, as thick impastoed rays and reflec-tions contrast with thinly painted areas, and colours swoop abruptly from light to dark.A heroic and graceful age is passing, a petty age of steam and money bustles to hasten itsdemise. The dying sun signals the end of the one, a pale reflecting moon the rise of theother. But just as Claude’s sunrises and sunsets enlist the viewer’s own sense of journey,so does the last berth of the recall the breaking up of every human life.Fighting Temeraire

joseph mallord will iam turner 1775 1851( – )

Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway before 1844

Oil on canvas, cm91 122 ng 538

While in the Turner seemed to deplore the Industrial Revolution, Fighting Temeraire his attitude in this, one of his last great works, is much more ambiguous. The 1840s

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was the period of ‘railway mania’ and the restless Turner appreciated the speed andcomfort of this form of travel. An unreliable anecdote by Turner’s champion, Ruskin,records the origins of this picture in a train ride through a rainstorm, during which theartist is supposed to have stuck his head out of the window. Excited as ever by strongsensations, Turner replicates the experience in paint, although the viewer is imaginedas seeing the approaching train from a high vantage point.

The bridge was, and is, recognisable as Maidenhead Viaduct across the Thamesbetween Taplow and Maidenhead, on the newly laid Great Western line to Bristol andExeter. Begun on Brunel’s design in 1837 and finished in 1839, the viaduct was thesubject of controversy, critics of the GWR saying that it would fall down. The view is towards London; the bridge seen at the left is Taylor’s road bridge, of which thefoundation stone was laid in 1772.

Once again Turner relies on Claude (page 191) for the diagonal recession from fore-ground to a vanishing point at the centre of the picture. The aims of the two artists,however, are very different. The exaggeratedly steep foreshortening of the viaductalong which our eye hurtles to the horizon is used to suggest the speed at which thelocomotive irrupts into view through the driving rain, headlight blazing. Ahead of it,disproportionately large, a hare – proverbially swiftest of all animals – bounds acrossthe tracks; we doubt if it will win the race and escape with its life. A skiff is on the riverfar beneath, and in the distance a ploughman stoically turns his furrow. Virtuoso swirlsand slashes, and smears and sprays of paint, simulate rain, steam and speed to blurthese figures of the old countryside. Exhilaration and regret are mingled with alarm; in a second we must leap aside to let the iron horse roar by.

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