Italian Renaissance Drawings

Don't stand on ceremony. In this exhibition it's essential that you can get right up close to the drawings. A handful are so faint that at first glance you seem to be looking at a blank sheet. It's only when you get centimetres away that outlines become clear. Most though are much easier to see than that, even from a distance. All the great Renaissance names are here though it may not be the obvious artists who catch the eye. There's a delicate King David by Fra Angelico; janissaries by Bellini; beautiful female faces by Filippo Lippi and Verrocchio - all alongside drawings by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Botticelli. Cannily there are a couple of useful compare-and-contrasts. Raphael's drawing of St George is displayed alongside the painting (the drawing shows a slightly more aggressive saint) and a film superimposes Carpaccio's St Augustine onto the finished work. Possibly my favourite drawing though - as usual, completely unexpected - was a large, wild, landscape by Piero di Cosimo. That sense of the artist's imagination at work is everywhere in the exhibition but nowhere more than here.

Kingdom of Ife

It says a lot about the racism of colonial attitudes that many refused to believe that the incredible sculptures uncovered in Ife could possibly be the work of medieval Africans. All kinds of wild theories were thrown up in order to show that it was actually Europeans (any group would do) who actually created them. The British Museum displays a selection a stone, terracotta, brass and copper sculptures, exquisitely carved or cast, and very definitely African. Many of the heads seem to show scarification, while some, presumably of foreigners, have a distinctive cat's whiskers marking. I was particularly taken with an equestrian statue with a very endearing horse. In fact the sculptures aren't just of the human form. There are crocodiles, mudfish, apes, rams and other animals, often stylised but immediately recognisable. The sculpted heads often show traces of paint so would have looked rather different than they do today, especially if crowns or veils were fixed via the holes in many of them. It shows that it wasn't just the Renaissance Europeans who were creating exquisite objects.

Moctezuma

It's always interesting what exhibit in a show captures the attention. It's not necessarily the most famous or the most flashy. There's much to excite the imagination at the British Museum: the sculptures of figures have a pleasing simplicity combined with an attention to detail; carvings on stone are impressively vivid (with helpful diagrams to assist the identification of important elements); ceramics have flowing shapes and colourful decoration; and the various turquoise-encrusted objects show remarkable workmanship. But the item I was drawn to repeatedly was a 5 ft high wooden drum, covered with beautiful carvings of Eagle and Jaguar warriors. Even from a cursory glance, the skill is obvious, and it's hard to believe it's 500 years old. As with many of the objects, it's associated with the rituals of the Aztecs and the exhibition does a good job of contextualizing. Several pieces bear Moctezuma's name glyph and the various year glyphs are also highlighted. There's not much ghoulishness, apart from the mask made from a skull covered with turquoise and lignite. The culture is undeniably alien to our eyes (sacrificial rites, feathered serpents) but it exerts a powerful fascination.

British Museum

There were a couple of things that I wanted to see at the British Museum. I have to admit to being rather disappointed with the Babylon exhibition. I'd have liked more artefacts from Babylon itself. The glazed brick reliefs of lions and a dragon from the Processional Way give an indication of the physical splendour of the city but there was little about the lives of the occupants, and to be honest, cuneiform tablets don't exactly grip in the same way as other ancient written sources. The idea of Babylon may have inspired the imagination down the centuries but I'm afraid the exhibition didn't do much for me. However, it was salutary to be reminded of the damage the site has suffered since the American invasion of Iraq.
Personally I was far more entranced by the fragmentary wallpaintings from Nebamun's tomb-chapel in one of the Egyptian rooms. The details of the natural world are astonishing (a cat catching birds, different coloured cattle suggesting movement, hares and deer brought as offerings, fish in a pond) and one wishes that more paintings had survived. Even this handful of fragments though give an indication of how beautiful the tomb itself must have been.
The other unexpected delight was the exhibition Treasures of Shanghai: ancient Chinese bronzes and jades. Among the items are axes, wine and food vessels and even a drum support. My favourite was a vessel in the shape of a buffalo, from 13-11th century BC, where the elaborate decoration on the body contrasted with the simple, rather sweet, features of the face (actually part of the lid) The technique used in all the bronzes is astonishing, some of the later ones featuring silver inlay. Even the ceremonial jade axe heads are things of beauty, despite their simplicity. Later artists were inspired by the ancient vessels, copying the forms and decoration and it's easy to see why.