exhibitionists

We haven't stopped going to exhibitions. I've just been very remiss in posting about them.

Back in January, we visited Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian at The National Gallery, London:

image: Alesso Baldovinetti, Portrait of a Lady, probably 1465, The National Gallery, London

An American travel writer once quipped that visiting a portrait gallery is about as exciting as leafing through someone else's high school yearbook. But I love portraiture exhibitions. A really good portrait, no matter how idealized, always reveals a little something of the subject's personality...

Later in January, my mum and I visited Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture Around the Bay of Naples at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

I particularly enjoyed the section focusing on Pompeian gardens. The gardens in and around the grand bay-side villas featured aviaries, fountains, and impressive sculptures. But even the most modest homes within the town itself often had gardens. If space were particularly tight, plants were painted on the walls, the painted gardens visually expanding the actual ones:

image: fresco from the House of the Golden Bracelet, 1st century BC-1st century AD

Now I've been meaning to repaint the shed...