Two things occur to me, writing this blog. One is the need to explain why I am writing it, and the other is to put on record how much I love British arts and culture too. I am truly fortunate to live in the arty English town of Lewes, an hour away from London by train. I want to give you an idea of why I go to London and why I think it is still one of the great cities of the world. For me, it’s the place where I go most often to satisfy my life-long passion for music and art. In the one year I document here, I have been truly inspired by what I’ve seen and heard in good ol’ London Town.

Of course, also for the record, and for all this stuff about the wonders of Europe and, the UK’s foolishly severed relationship with it. I love London – scroll on to see some of my reasons for so doing.

One last thing – if I give the impression of being a bit of a globe-trotter, the truth is that mostly, as all writers, I spend most of my time in a small room here in the lovely town of Lewes in Sussex. In fact, friends tell me that I don’t. go out enough.

27th March 2025

Marie Lys, soprano, Elina Garanča, mezzo-soprano, Piotr Beczala, tenor, William Thomas, bass, Philharmonia Chorus, Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Riccardo Muti.

“Neil Fisher, chief music critic of The Times recently interviewed Riccardo Muti and aptly described him as the last of the ‘Big Beasts’. Tickets for this concert were like gold-dust, the hall was packed to the gunwales; there were people standing (with paid tickets) at the rear of the stalls. This was not simply another concert – it was a major musical event…It was not only a huge pleasure to attend this concert, but it was also a privilege and certainly one for the record books.” John Rhodes, Seen and Heard International.

27th March 2025

Petrarch’s rave review has it right. Conquering the heart is what Martini and other 14th-century painters from Siena do in the National Gallery’s devastatingly exact, epochal exhibition about the moment western art came alive. Simone’s painting of Laura is lost but you see why he was the artist for the job. He is so expressive, so tender, exploding any idea of medieval art as remote. Jonathan Jones, The Guardian.

29th April 2025

29TH APRIL 2025

Legions of keyboard fans know that Víkingur Ólafsson  does reflective like few others. Calmness, softness of touch and introspection are among the Icelandic pianist’s widely admired trademarks. It helps make him a perfect performer for the AirPod age……but how does Ólafsson respond to a full orchestra in a large-scale work such as Beethoven’s third piano concerto? The answer, in this opening concert of the Philharmonic Orchestra’s celebrationary 80th season, is that he does it with enviable ease. 

Before the concerto, Santtu-Matias Rouvali conducted the UK premiere of Gabriela Ortiz’s Si el Oxígeno Fuera Verde, which the orchestra had premiered in Amsterdam the previous day. Described by the composer as a fragile green murmur of life, the environmentally inspired work is delicately scored as a bubbling forest of gentle arpeggios and trills, which eventually coheres into an insistent dance with echoes of John Adams and the Stravinsky of The Rite of Spring.

Alongside Ólafsson, who stayed to listen to the second half of the concert, the evening’s star attraction was the Royal Festival Hall organ being played at full throttle. With Notre Dame cathedral’s Olivier Latry at the organ controls, and Rouvali neatly alive to the work’s overall architecture and colours, Saint-Saëns’s third symphony is a guaranteed crowd pleaser for a special occasion – and so it proved.  Martin Kettle, The Guardian

The result is a show that feels adventurous and fresh. Reconsidered by Tsang and Fuenteblanca, his art springs to life. And to top it all, in the show’s climax, we get The Three Dancers displayed on a pretend stage, lifted up in lights for us to examine properly and dramatically. The “dancers” are two women and a man, their figures twisted spikily into an edgy tango. The woman on the left is grimacing grotesquely. The man on the right is silhouetted mysteriously. The dancing nude at their centre seems to be the focus of their tension.

We’re watching a tug of love. I was reminded immediately of Princess Diana’s lament about three in a marriage being a bit crowded. Picasso has cast the central figure in the Camilla Parker Bowles role.The man is clearly Picasso, reduced, typically, to a silhouette. The screaming woman on the left is, surely, his Russian wife Olga, whom he had begun to caricature nastily in his art. The dancing nude is a lover who has come between them.The Tate has other theories and we’ll never know for sure. But what’s excellent here is how excitingly the show has framed the possibilities. It’s been a long time — several years — since an event as stimulating as this opened at Tate Modern. If it were up to me I would leave these rooms exactly as they are for ever, as a thrilling tribute to Picasso. Waldemar Januszczak, Waldemar.tv

2nd November 2025

Is home a place, a feeling, or an idea? Suh asks timely questions about the enigma of home, identity and how we move through and inhabit the world around us. Tate Modern.

2nd November 2025

Kngwarray’s paintings might well remind you of a kind of gestural abstraction they have nothing to do with, and which the artist would never in any case have seen. The things we look at in Kngwarray’s art are about an entirely different order of experience to the similar kinds of brushstrokes driven this way and that around other, more familiar canvases we might also find in Tate Modern, where her retrospective has arrived from the National Gallery of Australia. But this similarity is also one of the reasons Kngwarray became famous in the first place. Adrian Searle, The Guardian.

2nd November 2025

Installation by Carlos Cruz-Diez, 2019.

‘When light comes into contact with an artwork, it changes it completely. My challenge is to reveal to the viewer a reality without a past or a future: my works exist in a perpetual present.’

2nd November 2025

‘Rather unusual for ‘contemporary’ composers, Christian Lindberg actually has his ‘own identity’ – a voice of his own – and not at all derivative of other composers, as tediously customary in ‘contemporary’ music. Lindberg’s Trombone Concert No.4, is a mesmerising masterpiece and was warmly received by an enthused audience.

The elegantly elfistical Santtu-Matias Rouvali conducted a completely flawless performance of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony (subtitled ‘A Soviet artist’s practical, creative reply to just criticism’) with all tempos correctly judged from beginning to end: accents, clarity, phrasing, and dynamic range were exceptionally well-judged eliciting a highly charged emotional intensity from his immaculately tuned world-class orchestra.’ Alexander Verney-Elliott, Seen and Heard International.

16th January 2025

Indeed, anyone not au fait with the story of Gesualdo’s colourful life would be perplexed by much they saw here, especially as his two wives appear to be played by the same actress. No help is given in terms of texts (they’re printed in the programme but there are no surtitles) or other factual information.

The show is better seen… as a theatrical representation of Gesualdo’s tortured psyche as reflected in his shockingly chromatic harmonies, rather than a representational biopic. On that level it’s powerful and engrossing, the music extending far beyond contemporary Mannerism to something more like 20th-century Expressionism, expressing deep psychological trauma. Barry Millingon, The Standard.

19th February 2025

The distinctions are so often invoked that some find it hard to believe these artists could have anything in common. Which is precisely the twist of this show. It wants us to look far more closely at these minds and hands at work, and to discover fundamental similarities when the two are brought together. In its originality and insight, its brilliant selection and compelling texts, this is one of the most exhilarating shows I’ve ever seen. Laura Cumming, the Observer.

19th February 2025

Bruckner Symphony No. 8, Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Renes 

A rare appearance in the UK by Sir Donald Runnicles, a longtime fixture of the German classical music scene, had prompted excitement among audiences in London. The proposition of hearing him conduct the Philharmonia in Bruckner’s Symphony no. 8 in C minor stirred the musical loins of Bruckner-lovers, and there was a palpable buzz at the Royal Festival Hall on the evening. Alas, Sir Donald was indisposed, but Lawrence Renes gamely stepped in at short notice to lead the orchestra in the Haas edition of the score.

‘The performance of the symphony (Bruckner’s 8th Symphony) was nothing short of glorious and much of that must be due to Renes’s muscular conducting. His grasp of the structure of the work was palpable, and he revelled in the frequent volcanic eruptions in the work. The Scherzo oozed rhythmic energy, the three harps glistened. The long Adagio started very slowly and I feared the conductor was going to ignore the composer’s express direction Feierlich langsam, aber nicht schleppend (Ceremonially slow but don’t drag); thankfully, Renes soon imposed a slightly faster tempo. He built up the many climaxes with great skill, and the Wagner tubas shone. Indeed, the orchestra played magnificently across all sections, blended woodwind, firm strident brass, thundering timpani (Simon Carrington), mellow horns (led by Lasse Mauritzen) and the percussionist enjoying his two cymbal clashes: and all held together by the lithe and energetic Leader, Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay.

I am now thinking of starting a new blog entitled ‘Bring back Renes’ – or even, ‘Where’s Renes? Perhaps the Philharmonia will invite him back in a coming season with, say, Bruckner’s Fourth? I live in hope; but also hope Sir Donald, restored to full health, will return to a London podium very soon.’ John Rhodes, Seen and Heard International

19th March 2026

What stands out from the outset is the shift in perspective. Rather than presenting modernism as a story that begins in Europe and spreads outward, the exhibition recognises Lagos, Zaria, Ibadan and Enugu as major centres of artistic innovation in their own right. This reframing will resonate strongly with Black British visitors familiar with how cultural histories can be sidelined in mainstream institutions. Here, Nigeria is not the supporting act — it is the focus.

Written by Black History Month UK. 18/11/2025

19th March 2026

There was a time when London’s walls were papered with Mahler 2s; certainly, in the 1980s, performances were regular occurrences with nary a month going by without one or other of the capital’s concert halls having its roof blown off by massed choirs belting out Klopstock.

The Mahler craze has quieted, but there is always space for the mighty sonic edifice of the Second. Fittingly, given the prominence of the brass in Mahler, this performance was dedicated to the memory of trumpeter John Wallace, former Principal Trumpet of the Philharmonia Orchestra….

…Kent Nagano’s Mahler is a known entity, and shares with his Wagner (his ongoing historically-informed Ring cycle in particular, closing with Götterdämmerung in Dresden in May) an x-ray awareness of detail. This was an individual interpretation of the highest rank, as Nagano manages to pair that sense of detail with an awareness of the big picture, allowing climaxes to really register (another commonality with his Wagner).

Nagano also has the ability to create just the right momentum, a trait important everywhere but maybe especially so in the symphony’s opening paragraphs. His conducting technique is near-infallible, too: of all the many Mahler 2’s I have heard, none contained such perfectly controlled Luftpausen as this. Nagano gave space for the contrasting themes; again, just the right amount. It is worth mentioning some individual contributions from the orchestra that stood out: first horn Laurence Davies, and cor anglais player Maxwell Spiers…

…A simply superb trombone solo from Matthew Lewis was another highlight of the evening, as was the velvety sound of trombones and tuba at the ‘Dies irae’ theme. The finale is a movement of extremes, and Mahler piles on the scoring in true late-Romantic fashion. Somehow, Nagano made sense of the thorniest passages like few before him, while honouring the Modernism of the score, more notably in those proto-Ivesian moments of thematic juxtaposition…

…The placing of the off-stage contributions was carefully and effectively thought-through. Jane Archibald was just as special a soloist as Bock, her soprano the perfect complement to Bock’s mezzo. But it was Nagano that choreographed the great choral climax so perfectly, the Philharmonia Chorus beautifully soft on entry, the male voices later creating an imposing wall of sound, Nagano extending the silent pause after ‘Bereite dich’ daringly, as if himself asking, ‘Prepare yourself for what?’. ‘To live,’ came the answer, and how beautifully Archibald crowned the chorus. The Philharmonia Chorus could only be described as fearsomely present in the work’s final stretch; and yet the brass crowned it all, perfectly. Good to hear the RFH organ at full tilt, too. Colin Clarke, Opera Today.

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Last week I went to the new exhibition at London’s National Gallery. It is the first major exhibition in Britain of the magnificent Baroque paintings by the Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 – 1654), who, still relatively unknown in this country, is increasingly regarded as one of the great 17th century Italian Baroque painters who is now mentioned in the same awed breath as Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571 – 1610), known simply as Caravaggio as she is remembered as Artemisia. The show is to use a vulgar term, a wow.

I was wearing my surgical mask, of course, because of the gallery’s pandemic precautions, but it might have been essential if some of Artemisia’s goriest pictures had been enacted there in reality. One of Artemisia’s specialities was showing heroic women killing bad guys. Maybe her most famous and most sensational painting is the Uffizi version of her biblical-themed, Judith beheading Holofernes, which allows us to reimagine, if we have to, what it would be like, quite literally, cut off the head of a struggling man. Holofernes is the Assyrian general whose army is besieging the Jewish city of Bethulia and, Judith, a rich Bethulia widow, with her equally heroic maidservant, saves the day and, of course the city.

Artemisia’s painting challenged her great predecessor, Caravaggio, at his own game with her version of the same moment of horror. For Caravaggio the focus is on the agony and terror of the dying general, but Artemisia, no shirker of gore, puts the emphasis on the two women and the brutal reality of the assassination. In both pictures we are on the dramatic, even operatically bloody high ground of Italian Baroque. The Artemisia, in another difference from the Caravaggio, promotes the maidservant from a worried elderly observer into a co-conspirator and we realise that killing enemy generals is hard work if you are Caravaggio’s frail Judith instead of Artemisia’s muscular widow who looks like she knows how to wring out a wet blanket or two.

Artemisia, and her audience of admirers, couldn’t get enough of Judith – there are more than a few versions of this story, including the no less dramatic painting of Judith and her maidservant, Abra, about to escape from Holofernes’ tent and out through the enemy army’s camp. The dead general’s head is now turning a ghastly, and very dead, green and. the basket is dripping blood as the two women face the next set of dangers in their mission. Judith, her body still flexed for action, rests the sword on her shoulder, prepared to fight herself out of danger.

I don’t think I am being insensitive to the dilemma portrayed in these wonderful paintings if I stand back from the blood and admire the art in both works that show Artemisia’s mastery of colour, lighting and the human form. She allows her artistry to engage. fully rather than run away from these scenes of horror.

She’s at it again with another of her biblical heroines, in Jael and Sisera, a strangely gentle picture considering its subject. Sisera was a commander in the Canaanite army and Jael was a woman from the rival Kenite tribe in another of those Old Testament battle stories that I was taught at school. It’s another scene inside a tent, this time it is Jael’s, she has invited Sisera in with the promise of drinks, dinner and other more intimate refreshments. When he falls asleep, after the fun, I assume, she gets a tent peg and hammers it into his temple with obvious results. As a small schoolboy, I was given nightmares by this story – even to the point of thinking campsites were extremely dangerous places to sleep in. Artemisia’s painting almost lulls us into the calm state that Jael manages with Sisera. For a moment, before the hammer finds it mark, there is a sense of tranquil meditation that is particularly reflected in Jael’s expression. Could she have enjoyed their liaison too, I wonder. Sisera, I hope, died peacefully in his sleep, as they say in local newspapers’ ‘births, marriages and deaths’ columns. Maybe Artemisia was contemplating her relationships, good and bad, with the men in her life. There is almost a mood of forgiveness and tenderness, perhaps, in this painting – but that hammer did descend to do its work.

So, why are we drawn to these pictures of heroic women killing men? Murder is murder, after-all. I have tried not to mention Artemisia’s biography on this as it is so often quoted as an explanation. Maybe it is enough to acknowledge that there was a market, mostly male, for these kinds of paintings and Artemisia knew what would sell. It has to be told though that in her late teens she was raped by a painter friend of her artist father Orazio Gentileschi, and as part of the rape trial she was in interrogated by torture. It is important, of course, to recognise this horrible event but not to see it as the basis of Artemisia’s genius. She was, first and foremost, a great artist who could use her own experiences, even the most traumatic, to inform her art.

Her rape has often been quoted in reference to her earliest masterpiece, Susannah and the Elders, painted when she was still only seventeen or eighteen years old. She was taught by her father, who may have advised her, but no one knows for sure. The story of Susannah and the Elders is from the Apocrypha. Susannah, a young wife, is bathing in the garden when two old men see her and try to seduce her. She refuses their advances and they threaten to accuse her of adultery if she doesn’t submit to them. She still refuses and it is only in court that she is vindicated. It doesn’t take a Miss Marple to see the significance of the story to the young Artemisia.

Susannah is the heroine, along with Judith, most associated with the artist who painted both subjects repeatedly throughout her life. We are left in no doubt about the unpleasant character of the two elders as they insinuate themselves on Susannah and whisper between themselves like clients in a seedy stripclub. Susannah is naked and vulnerable. Why do so many women in Baroque art insist on bathing in semi-public places? It is like the women in vampire films who tend to undress in front of open windows. Artemisia’s Susannah though isn’t as vulnerable as we might think. She will defend herself in court, as Artemisia did, and she shows with her hand gestures that she is not going to be dominated by these men. Her gesture, sometimes criticised as awkward, shows her twisting her body one way and her arms the other. To me, this looks like an example of self-defence performed by a woman who knows the meaning of such movement..

As it happened, the evening before my trip to London, I had been at my weekly tai-chi class where I had asked the instructor, Neil Johnson, about a soreness in my knees which seemed to be caused when I practised certain tai-chi moves. We did the whole lesson on how these defensive moves should be performed in a way that protects the knees from twisting. The upper body turns but the lower body remains static and solid. I think this is what Susannah is doing when the old men come on the attack.

I have been practicing this movement in my garden, and my knees are already thanking me. Tai-chi might look graceful but it is, in fact, a martial art, the companion of my White Crane Kungfu style. A gentle friend of mine from that club was once attacked when he was teaching one-to-one in a prison. He used that move in self-defence and the attacker fell to the floor with a broken arm. So, well done Susannah, you and Artemisia, I believe, knew how to defend yourself. Maybe they too had to learn the hard way.

Her later Susannah paintings, the last one painted over forty years later, may display her growing technique and maturity but, for me, that early painting catches something unique. It remains one of my favourites and stays in the memory after seeing so many of her great works at the wonderful National Gallery exhibition.

I was careful not to read too much biography into the pictures but, I was also fascinated by the powerful personality that most obviously lies behind her works. I don’t think we can ever ‘know’ Artemisia as a person but, maybe we can get some idea of her forceful character from the portrait by her friend and colleague, the French Baroque painter, Simon Vouet (1590 – 1649).

Simon Vouet also painted a portrait of Francesco Maria Maringhi (1593 – after 1653), a Florentine gentleman, the man that Artemisia loved with true passion and who became her life-long lover and financial supporter.

I am pleased that Artemisia’s biography isn’t just about the bad things – love and friendship were there too as was revealed when her letters to Maringhi were discovered as recently as 2011 – they are displayed at the London exhibition. Her rapid handwriting says it all, emotion, spelling mistakes and all. ‘Mio carisimo core” my dearest heart, “Io vorrei che Vostra Signoria venisse qui quanto prima” I would like your lordship to come here as soon as possible “Perché io non volio aspettare piu male che io mi abbia” Because I don’t want to wait more badly that I have.’ “afizionata” affectionately Artemisia.

In Artemisia we have a passionate and intelligent artist who also happened to be a passionate and intelligent woman who managed to live as a respected and successful painter in a country that had no shortage of great artists. She had that terrible rape, she was tortured, she had an arranged marriage, all but one of her children died before adulthood, and money problems were never ever very far away., but she persevered with her work as an artist and her difficulties insured that she would become a truly great artist.

Her early painting of the Madonna and Child shows a real mother and a real child – the tender focus on those baby feet is just one of the features that mark this painting out from the many similar works by her great male colleagues.

Her Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy came to light in 2014 and, unfortunately, even though now lies hidden in a private collection, but it has become an instant hit with anyone who is lucky enough to see it. Her Magdalene is not a repentant sexual sinner but a woman transformed and inspired. I like to think Artemisia was painting a mental state that she knew well from experience. Artemisia, the woman of passionate sensitivity is there in her Self-Portrait as a Lute Player.

She was, apparently, a good musician who had musician and as well as painter colleagues and who respected her as one of them – which, I am sure, she was.

I feel closer to her now after my encounter with her at this outstanding exhibition which had been postponed by the pandemic but is now fully open and will run until January 2021. I will end with the painting that I knew before coming to this show, her self-portrait as an artist – part allegory, part manifesto for a woman who knew that she was as good as if not better than the male artists around her.  She wrote to one of her many patrons “a woman’s name raises doubts until her work is seen…I will show Your Illustrious Lordship what a woman can do.” It is still my favourite among all her works. It speaks to us all and states again as it keeps needing to be said, that art is not a luxury, it is a fundamental human need. It, like that tai-chi gesture, can also be our best self-defence.

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Titian’s Six Masterpieces reunited after over 400 years

In early March this year, I was looking forward to going to see the National Gallery’s much anticipated Titian exhibition Love Death and Desire. The great Italian Renaissance painter’s six masterpieces painted for King Philip II’s private pleasure were sold off after his death and this exhibition was set to reunite them in one room for the first time in over 400 years.

Before I got there, pandemic hit and the exhibition closed after only three days. Thanks no doubt to a lot of anxious and dedicated arts curators and galleries, the paintings were allowed to wait together until we could go back in. This has now happened and the show will remain at the National Gallery until January 2021. After then it will travel to Boston and Madrid. Don’t miss it.

I booked tickets for 10th August and joined nine other people for our own very exclusive social-distanced viewing. We were honorary Kings of Spain, alone for a couple of delicious hours with these magnificent paintings. I hope, or do I, that the, not always very cheerful monarch who ordered the Spanish Armada got as much pleasure from them as we did.

Titian, or Tiziano Vecelli (c.1488/90 – 1576), was a favourite painter of Charles V (1500 – 1558) Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain, and Philip’s father. When the old Habsburg emperor retired to a monastery and then died, the relationship between great artist and Europe’s most powerful monarch continued as young Prince Philip became King Philip II of Spain.

These rather grumpy portraits of Charles and Philip, show them as surprising enthusiasts for one of the most erotically-charged painters not only of the Renaissance but of any period. Titian, who looks pretty grumpy too in his self-portrait, had an instinct for putting sensuality into his work.

The National Gallery isn’t being sensationalist calling the show Love Death and Desire. All of these words are writ large in these late, so-called Poesie (poems) .

Titian was the master sensualist painter. Charles and Philip must have enjoyed having his provocative, but also philosophical work, hanging in their private rooms. Titian called the set of paintings for Philip, Poesie because he wanted to use painting as a visual form of poetry, expressing emotion and meaning through image and colour – sometimes verging on early predictions of abstract art and even Cubism.

In the self-portrait of himself as the old man who painted these works, we see the image of the profound artist, the famous man who was, to his mind, the equal of kings as well as his fellow artists. He was, as we can see in the Poesie paintings, exploring his own mature originality rather than merely following royal fashion.

His younger self-portrait gives us a clue to his intense sensitivity and, yes, sensuality. This is a young man who had felt the pleasures and pain of love and desire and possibly death too. We are lucky that this young man lived into his eighties or even nineties, his birth date is uncertain, still at work developing his inspiration and adding new levels of subtlety and ambiguity to his art. He was still at work when he and his son succumbed to the plague in 1576.

King Philip II (1527 – 1598) looks all too human in the troubled portrait of him in his early twenties. He’s a young Actaeon, perhaps, who sees more than he understands. Here is the young prince known for his passionate and voluptuous interest in women. The elderly Titian knew Philip well and understood his desires and frustrations.

The Poesie paintings were, lavish studies of the nude, designed for Philip’s private apartments. They were not exactly the kind of soft porn posters seen on the walls of modern adolescent males, but, amongst their many meanings, their sexual allure is unmissable. The king’s prudish descendants were responsible for selling off the paintings separately after his death. It is only this year that they have been brought back together again so that we, like Philip, can enjoy them in the same room, as they were intended.

The six paintings, based on stories from classical mythology were conceived as a set with underlying themes of, as the National Gallery, calls them, love, death and desire, and also, of course, about the impact of the gods on their playthings, human beings. Maybe there were lessons here for the King. Royal power, uncontrolled, includes the power to destroy, Titian warns. The crown should be worn with wisdom and compassion.

The first of the Poesie is Danaë, the story, like most of the six, is based on one from the Roman poet Ovid (born 43 BC) in his Metamorphoses, where the princess is locked in a tower by her father, Arcas, the King of Argos, to prevent her having a child. The famously randy god Jupiter can’t be kept out. He appears as a shower of gold which descend from heaven and impregnate her with the baby who would become the hero, Perseus. It is quite clear what Danaë thinks about this. Her face is a mix of fear, anticipation and desire as the gold descends into her opened thighs and her fingers and toes tighten on her silky sheets. She has become one of the most famous and influential nudes in art history., reappearing in, for example, the work of Goya and Manet.

Danaë’s maid, an older woman, tries to catch some of the gold in her shawl – maybe because they are gold or, possibly, because they are the god’s potent juices which might have the power to restore her own youthful beauty.

The picture is smaller than the others because the top part was cut off after Philip’s time. Luckily there is a Netherlandish copy showing that in the original painting Jupiter was seen in the sky with his symbol, the eagle, also a symbol of the Habsburg empire. The eagle may have appealed to Philip, but it looks awkwardly stuck on and, thus, maybe, the next owners of the painting made an aesthetic decision to cut it. Certainly, without the god, the golden shower has an abstract subtlety that, like Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, holds more power, rather than less, in its truncation.

The second painting, Venus and Adonis, is also a tale from Ovid and it also tells of the dangers of love between gods and humans. Venus, the goddess of love, has sustained an accidental injury when she was grazed by one of Cupid’s darts. The result was her falling in love with the handsome young huntsman, Adonis, who, even in his own opinion, was more handsome than the gods. Cupid is seen sleeping idly under a tree while Venus pleads with her lover not to go hunting.

He is bursting with confidence and pulls away from her as she swivels her body to pull him back. We can tell by his hunting dogs that danger is afield. The dog on the right can smell blood – it will be Adonis’ – as darkening clouds begin to blot out the blue sky.

Adonis has the muscular body of a young man but also the innocently arrogant face of a child. He pulls one way while Venus pulls the other in Titian’s version of a tug-of-love. Her naked body is displayed, almost both front and back, simultaneously, pre-echoing Cubism, and challenging the limitations of a two-dimensional canvas. Her pose, swivelling provocatively on her seat, legs splayed, buttocks squeezed, is the very image of frustrated passion after what appears to have been an equally impassioned sexual encounter.

There is another innocent young man in the next picture, Diana and Actaeon, which is also taken from a story by Ovid. Diana is the goddess of chastity as well as being goddess of hunting. Actaeon is another of those handsome young huntsmen whose bodies have grown up quicker than their brains. He is out hunting for stags when he is separated from his friends and stumbles onto the scene of the naked goddess bathing with her equally nude ladies-in-waiting. The young man’s expression shows his amazement, his confusion but, also, his fear. If you study Diana’s expression, you can see why. Never has the female nude shown such imperious anger. His fate is sealed in this brief but dramatic moment. He is about to be turned into a stag and then devoured by his own hunting dogs. A punishment much too severe for the young man’s accidental act of trespass. Monarchs beware, Titian says, one day you too will be judged for your acts of cruelty. The brutal reality of being torn apart by hounds, would not have been lost on hunt-loving King Philip II.

Diana is at it again in the next painting, Diana and Callisto, usually seen as the second half of a pair with the Actaeon picture. It shows one of the dramatic highlights from Ovid’s tale of the unfortunate nymph Callisto. She is another of Diana’s ladies-in-waiting. She has been raped and impregnated by the god Jupiter. Yes, him again. Her pregnancy is exposed in the most demeaning and cruel manner when she is stripped and forced to join the other bathers in their nudity before Diana expels her from her court.

The painting has suffered over time and, unfortunately Callisto’s face is the most damaged, but not so much that we can’t identify her agony as she is stripped and exposed in front of her cruel judge.

Callisto’s child by Jupiter grew up to be Arcas, King of Argos, the same king, as in the first picture, who locked up his daughter Danaë where she too was to experience Jupiter’s sexual passion. Arcas, like Actaeon and Adonis, was also an enthusiastic huntsman and when Callisto is turned into a bear, she became the oblivious King Arcas’ intended prey before Jupiter relents and turns them both into constellations of stars – Ursa Major ( the Great Bear) and Arctophylax (The Herdsman).

The drama of the scene, as in many of Titian’s works is not lessened by the use of the nude figures as a variety of innovative experiments in depictions of the human body that will have consequences later in the works of, amongst others, Rubens, Cézanne and even Picasso.

The next picture, Perseus and Andromeda, also draws on a story from Ovid. This time it is Perseus, the son of Danaë and Jupiter begotten in that golden shower, who is also therefore the grandson of Arcas, King of Argos and nephew of poor Callisto, who, by now, is shining from the night sky as a constellation of stars and, believe it or not, he was also the grandfather of Hercules.. Titian portrays him as a youthful hero with superhero characteristics as he plunges from the sky to free a damsel in distress and to kill the threatening monster.

Andromeda had the same problem with the gods as unfortunate Adonis. Her mother claimed that her daughter was more beautiful than the already very beautiful Nereids (the sea nymphs) and being more beautiful than the gods is never a good thing. Andromeda, naked, of course, is chained to a rock as a tasty morsel for the local sea monster. Perseus happens to be passing and sees this beautiful woman and, as in all such stories, immediately falls in love with her and kills the monster. He became one of the superstar monster-slayers of classical myth after his famous killing of Medusa, she of the serpent hair and the killing look. Perseus’ polished shield, that mirrored Medusa’s death look back on her, is here used to in the attack on the monster.

Monsters, threatening clouds, rough seas and chains are combined as dark contrasts to the highly vulnerable Andromeda’s white skin. She shines out from her background of black rock. She dominates one side of the canvas. The other side is bisected by the diving hero who is as over-dressed in yellow and pink, as Andromeda is naked. He is also as athletically active as she is passively helpless. The world of classical gods, as Titian tells us, our world, is a dangerous place when the elements turn nasty.

Andromeda demonstrates that Titian never tires of finding interesting and provocative ways of posing his nudes. She is allowed to turn her captivity into a sensuous dance of seduction, even a table dance, for her young rescuer’s benefit. Perseus has the look of another Adonis or Actaeon, an impetuous and muscled youth. His fate was brighter than their’s. He actually got to marry Andromeda and live happily with her, if not ever after, for a very long time.

In the last of these six pantings, The Rape of Europa, Titian gives us frolicking cherubs who are even more airborne than Perseus. They are excited to see the fun going on beneath them in the sea. Another mischievous cherub is riding a dolphin in imitation of the main action. Jupiter, yes, him, disguised as a bull, abducts the princess, Europa. The cherubic observers might find it fun in the way that Cupid enjoys playing with human emotions, but this is serious business. The bull is stealing the alarmed princess and taking her across the sea to Crete where her rape will lead to the birth of a baby, Minos.

He will become the first king of Crete. Thus founding the long and often bloody history of Europe, the continent named after the unfortunate Europa. In Titian’s time, and so often since, Europe was a turbulent place dominated by its most powerful monarch, Philip, King of Spain.

Jupiter’s bull is a beautiful garlanded creature who beguiles Europa and persuades her to go for a ride on his back. She is expecting the kind of pleasure that I used to enjoy on a seaside donkey-ride. Once she mounts the beautiful beast, the awful truth dawns and she clings onto the bull for her life as she’s carried away, followed by a menacing sea monster, reminiscent of the one in the Perseus and Andromeda painting.

To suit Titian’s plan for all six paintings, Europa is wearing the loosest of revealing dresses which offers her body very little cover. This is the kind of clothing you could call the new naked. While the cherubs frolic, Jupiter looks round. We see just one of his eyes. It shows the god’s ambivalent emotions. Is that look lustful and yet fearful? Is he looking at us, incriminating us, and, maybe Philip too?

These ambiguities are exactly why the paintings were designed as poetry where not everything is as it seems. If King Philip II was meant to learn lessons from the Poesie, then maybe he was meant to recognise the moral as well as political responsibilities and dangers in ruling an empire. We too can see ourselves in the writhing body of Europa as she is dragged against her will into what looks like chaos.

A seventh painting, The Death of Actaeon, was never a part of the six Poesie. It is included in the exhibition because there is documentary evidence that Titian had planned to include it in the series but then either changed his mind or never got round to it in time before his career took him elsewhere. The ageing and increasingly experimental artist produced one of his most memorable works in this weirdly disturbing picture with its muted brown and burnt orange tones and the extreme economy of the brushwork.

The hunting dog behind Diana, if it is Diana, has blurred legs which highlight the speed of its movement. Merely hinted at too is the shadowy figure of the disappearing horseman seen in the distance through silhouetted tree trunks and the shimmering abstractions of foliage. Actaeon himself, in mid-transformation from living human into dead stag, is at the moment of his gruesome death, is painted in an almost sketchy style. His legs, sprouting fur are merely hinted at in a scene that is a minimalist paraphrase of a catastrophe in a moment of flashing imagery.

Diana, the goddess of hunting, is deprived of the string for her bow and even an arrow. Has it already sped away towards her prey? She is over-dressed compared to the female forms in the other pictures but her right breast is revealed. Maybe is was because the picture was meant for Philip’s private rooms, or just because this is a Titian. The exposed breast is made the centre of attention, a symbol, as in Europa’s picture, of the nude barely hidden beneath a dress that ripples with the speed of the action. That breast is a reminder of what Actaeon has seen and what the sight has cost him.

The ferocious goddess of chastity is also a relentless hunter and here, she is sending one last and redundant arrow into the savaged body of hapless Actaeon. We are all warned, I think. Beware of the gods and other powers-that-be in a world where danger is real and life itself can be lost in a flickering moment.

We will probably never know what Philip thought as he gazed at these paintings in his private room. I wonder if he understood Titian’s implied messages in these painted poems.

As the king grew older, maybe pressures of state weighed him down with anxiety and disappointment. Ageing may have led to the realisation that his youthful passion and hope for the love of a woman had been left unfulfilled by dead wives and dethroned mistresses. He may have taken some comfort from Titian’s great parade of nudes, but he would also have seen their warnings. No matter how great the ruler, under the trappings of state, and no matter how who thrilling the passions of youth, we are all as vulnerable as Actaeon and Callisto – whoever we are, our destiny is not in our own hands and our lives share the same ending.

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I have finally got round to writing a blog now that, wisely or foolishly, the great British lockdown is being eased. Until now, I haven’t quite managed to write about this, the strangest of times. I was last on here in February for the launch of my poetry collection, Remembering Blue, http://www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-poetry-colin-bell-remembering-blue.htm After that memorable event, my last public adventure was when I went to London to see the impressive Troy exhibition at the British Museum.

Then the curtain came down on my life outside my home here in Lewes.

Here are some photographs and thoughts to mark the passage from then to now. Just one person’s view on the extraordinary and, for many, the often tragic interruption to normal life that was, and still is, Covid-19. I know that I have been very lucky.

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When I was in London last week, I went to lunch in the National Gallery’s very civilized restaurant in the Sainsbury’s Wing with its views over Trafalgar Square and the cool, calm ambience that may stem from the fact that everyone dining there had really come for the art.

There was an elegant Italian woman eating on her own and making pencil notes on an A4 pad, two intense young men with dark-framed spectacles and tweed jackets talking about Giotto, and, like everywhere else in the World these days, two women were discussing Colin Firth, King George VI and THAT movie, The King’s Speech.

I had an excellent cauliflower soup followed by rack of lamb and a very enjoyable Neapolitan red wine which, the entertaining Neapolitan waiter told me is the coming thing. Naples and Southern Italy in general, as I am sure you all know, is best known for its white wine but that is all changing or so it seems if my waiter is to be believed.

After lunch,  as I always try to do when I am in London, I went to the Medieval and Renaissance Gallery on the floor above the restaurant to spend some time with just one painting.

That day, I went to the Florentine room and sat in front of Fra Lippo Lippi’s Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Dominic. You really don’t have to be a devote Christian to love the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance especially if the artist in question is Fra Lippo Lippi who may have been a friar but that didn’t stop him fathering a child or living with the baby’s apparently very beautiful mother.

We know that she was an attractive woman because she appears in so many of his paintings. I don’t think she is the Virgin in this picture but, true to form, this Mary is pretty obviously modelled on a real life Italian beauty and she lives on in that spirit. if she had been around in the 1960s, I thought, she would probably have been one of Mick Jagger’s girlfriends.

I love Lipp’s humanity which shines from this picture. Mary, with her child  greedily suckling at her breast, is all feminity and feminine cool gazing intently at her son, Jerome, the wild man amongst the Christian Fathers, is rapt in amazement but also a kind of mad man’s anguish at what he is seeing – devouring the image with his eyes. Dominic is quite different. He is all gentle sensitivity, absorbed in what I assume is The Bible and his face has all the marks of great intelligence. The downward mouth with its hint of a smile, the heavily lidded-eyes focused in concentration and then the raised eye-brows show us that he is surprized, moved and enlightened by what he is reading.

A bird is feeding is chick with a worm in the tree and, Lippi is, I suppose, showing us that each member of the group is receiving nourishment of one sort or another.

I did too and I am not just referring to that rack of lamb.

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