Celebrated this, the second week of living in London by dashing off to the Velázquez at the National and the British Library's London: A Life in Maps.
The painting shown above, An Old Woman Cooking Eggs (1618, oil, 100.5 x 119.5 cm, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), is my favourite of those on show. I love its colours, its use of light and shadow — and its striking use of a double perspective: I didn't buy the catalogue, but I browsed it and recall it as talking quite excitedly about how we look down on the eggs, the bowl, the knife, the knife's shadow … and directly at the boy and old woman. Fascinating. The small, free exhibition guide takes a rather different view: 'he is not able to fuse the independently studied parts to create convincing space'. The boy-painter, just 19, may well have struggled, but I still find the painting utterly memorable and the two angles of vision are part of what makes it stay in my mind. That, the colours, light … and the humanity of the two figures.
Rod's piece about the Velázquez is here, says many good things and makes many good links. More about the maps later — I've got Peter Barber's book to read and I want to get hold of Peter Whitfield's London: A Life in Maps.
