The Harley Gallery and Portland Collection at Welbeck Abbey – respectively a modern art gallery in a converted stable block and a purpose-built gallery to make publicly available (free) the treasures of the Dukes of Portland. The Collection was well worth seeing, but we’re unlikely to re-visit: a lot of not tremendously good aristocratic portraits (even the much-publicised Van Dykes were not his best, out-classed by the paintings of Hyacinthe Rigaud – an artist new to us and still interesting even though, despite the name, he turned out to be a man), with some impressive silverware and landscape paintings. The Gallery included a temporary exhibition of works by Rose English (surely an adopted name) riffing of the twin aristocratic interests of horses and beautiful young women: most wittily in her 1975 ‘Country Life' in which old black-and-white covers of Country Life magazine, featuring young aristocratic women on their engagement or coming out (which meant something different then), are mounted alongside small ceramic horses, some of them wearing Jaegar headscarves. Priceless!
Mary Beard’s Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limit – BBC TV series. Interesting and clever, of course, but also lovely to see how Beard, who was already good in her previous TV shows, has now perfected her broadcasting persona. She talks directly to you through the TV screen as though you’re her best mate: sort of like an academic Miranda, without the pratfalls. Walking through Mantova (Mantua) and coming across a Roman column embedded in a later house, I longed for her to appear at my elbow and explain the inscription to me, running her finger along the letters.
In the Club – series two of the BBC drama, picking up the story of the mothers from the ante-natal class eighteen months on, with new babies (from them and from new characters) on the way. Once again there’s a sense of an impending car crash about each episode, but still there’s still something compelling about this drama: even though the characters aren’t necessarily likeable, you want them to be okay. And that’s the product of good writing and acting.
Falling upward: a spirituality for the two halves of life – by Franciscan priest Richard Rohr. According to him, the main preoccupations of our culture (establishing an identity, finding a social group, achieving security) reflect the spiritual priorities of the first half of life, which is about developing a strong container for the personality. In the second half of life the priority becomes finding the contents that container was meant to hold, which entails taking the downward path and engaging in shadow work. Old dualisms no longer have much meaning, but growth and development takes place through humiliation, sadness and disappointment. Makes sense, though knowing it doesn’t make doing it any easier.
The Palazzo Ducale (Ducal Palace), Mantova – two hours plus of Renaissance splendour. Except that is, for the first seven rooms which contain only miscellaneous antiquities and signs laboriously explaining why the room has the name by which it is known, usually because of some feature long-since destroyed or removed so what’s the point: an object-lesson in how not to write captions. But the paintings were great (several Rubens, including recovered fragments of one cut up for sale by a Napoleonic general during a looting spree), and the decorated rooms towards the end of the tour were truly fabulous. Highlight for us was the Zodiac room: a bedroom with a ceiling showing the night sky, constellations marked out, which I’m afraid reminded us of In the Night Garden; it even included Iggle Piggle’s boat.
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