HUON MALLALIEU
CARLO CRIVELLI: SHADOWS ON THE SKY
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham 23rd February to 29th May
JULIAN PERRY: THERE ROLLS THE DEEP
Southampton City Art Gallery 18th February to 4th June
Carlo Crivelli’s The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius (pictured above) has been in the National Gallery since 1864.
It is one of the best-known works there, familiar even to those who cannot quite recall the name of the painter. It is the one in that, through a doorway, we see the Virgin receiving the Holy Spirit, as she prays in an elaborate room. In the narrow street, Gabriel waits to give his message – if allowed by the local saint determined to distract him with a model of his town. Above on a balcony are a peacock and a goldfinch, representing the Resurrection.
The painting had a strong influence on Edward Burne-jones, most obviously in his 1884 King Cophetua and the Beggar
Maid, which echoes its closed, vertical composition. The balustrade above that Maid is decorated with peacocks and, two years later, Burne-jones used a very Crivellesque peacock for his memorial to Laura Lyttelton.
For Susan Sontag, the definition of ‘camp is the paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and trompe l’oeil insects and cracks in the masonry’. She might also have mentioned some of his hands. His hyper-real style is almost surreal. He was evidently a lover of animals and particularly birds; birders should have great fun at the Ikon show.
Crivelli (c 1430-95) was Venetian and worked mostly in the Marche. The German Lucas Cranach (1472-1553) never went to Italy and is unlikely to have seen a Crivelli, but there are strong affinities, especially in their females. A possible conduit is Jacopo de’ Barbari, who trained with Crivelli’s Venetian teacher and then settled in Germany where he met Cranach.
Depending on how you list polyptychs, between 30 and 50 works by Crivelli are known. The group at Birmingham includes paintings from Berlin, the Wallace Collection and the V&A, as well as several from the National Gallery. It is a treat.
In advance of a bid to be the 2025 UK City of Culture, Southampton has refurbished its art gallery, which reopens with Juilan Perry’s powerful show on coastal erosion as a symptom of climate change.
There are 30 new works centred on a polyptych ‘secular altarpiece to the Assumption of CO₂’, inspired by Grünewald. Around it are 14 3D cube works: transparent boxes, each containing a double-sided painting and a mirror.
There are also three large canvases of uprooted trees first shown at the Venice Biennale. This exhibition should be Perry’s long-overdue reputational breakthrough.