Right of my desk is one particular shelf:
Such vanities, at their ordinary norm, tend to be 'coffee-table books', casually left beside where, like pensive Selima, the Mistress or Master usually reclines, to impress a casual visitor on the depth, learnedness and perception of their sporter.
These glossy efforts should be something more than an ornament or a momento. That 'something' ought to add depth and understanding to the exhibition from which they originate.
As I imply, some are better at that than others. Many are definite improvements on the exhibition itself — (editors) Gareth Williams, Peter Pentz and Maththias Wemhoff on Vikings, life and legend for the 2014 travelling show would be my best the best example. Here's another:
16. (editors) Claire Breay and Joanna Storey: Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, Art, Word, War
This is, by any avoirdupois, a heavy tome. It runs to over four hundred pages of quality art-paper.
Back in 2012 the British Library bought St Cuthbert's Gospel from the Jesuits (we'll come to that small history in a moment). The fund-raising was up to £9 million, which suggests the importance of this tiny piece (think 5½ x 3½ inches). We are assured that it will rotate between the BL and viewings oop north. The BL then had to construct an exhibition around its acquisition. That's the occasion: this is the record.
The bulk of the exhibits were either similarly small — the Alfred Jewel, borrowed from the Ashmolean almost ridiculously so — or script based. It was like old-times to be back with the Book of Durrow from the TCD Long Room — which prompts a wonder at the relative exhibition value of the other Book there, Durrow's younger-by-a-century sibling.
The star of that BL show was meant to be St Cuthbert's Gospel: the text of St John, written we must believe in the monastic scriptorium at Jarrow, and around a century after Cuthbert's death (AD687). what makes it special is this is the oldest known bound European text. Its cover, then, is of greater intrinsic interest than the text.
After his death Cuthbert's coffin was repeatedly on the move, to keep it from intrusive Danes. it and his corpse eventually arrived at Durham. In AD1104 the monks decided to have a poke at the old lad, and found this book in the coffin.
When Henry VIII Tudor dissolved the monastic establishment at `durham, the Gospel and other saleables were put on the market. The Gospel ended up the property of Stonyhurst College. For many years the College left it 'on loan' with the British Museum/Library., until the Jesuits decided to realise its considerable value.
Unless one is into manuscripts, the exhibition was hardly over-whelming, whereas the depth and scholarship in the catalogue undoubtedly achieves that end. Only through the extensive annotations in the text do th exhibits (and their analogues mentioned, but not displayed) achieve a full context.
The exhibition had a chronology, spanning — let us remember — over six full centuries. It started with 'Spong Man' – the seated, unisex figure which must once have been the seal for a flask or a cremation pot, found at North Elmham. That is dated back to the early period of Anglo-Saxon occupation. It concluded with two versions of the Domesday Book — the Exeter Domesday and Great Domesday..
Just when one feels one should be reaching an end, the catalogue properly concludes with fourteen pages (!) of comprehensive bibliography.
Before I wrap up this post, I must add two particular memories from other exhibitions, and now to be revisited through these catalogues.
From the winter 2011-2012 National Gallery Leonardo show there were the two versions of the Virgin of the Rocks facing each other, and so ready to be compared and contrasted. Since the National already had one (the darker version from as late as 1506) bringing the Louvre's, earlier (1485-ish), prototype to London was something of an achievement. It involved a mutual exchange deal, of course.
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