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Exhibitions currently running:

Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure - Explore the musical pastimes of the 17th-century Netherlands through this exhibition combining the art of Vermeer and his contemporaries with rare musical instruments, songbooks and live music. For the first time the National Gallery’s two paintings by Vermeer, A Young Woman standing at a Virginal and A Young Woman seated at a Virginal are brought together with Vermeer’s Guitar Player, which is currently on exceptional loan from the Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House. Three days a week visitors can experience live performances in the exhibition space by the Academy of Ancient Music, bringing the paintings to life with music of the period. Music was one of the most popular themes in Dutch painting, and carried many diverse associations. In portraits, a musical instrument or songbook might suggest the education or social position of the sitter; in scenes of everyday life, it might act as a metaphor for harmony, or a symbol of transience. The exhibition displays 17th-century virginals (a type of harpsichord), guitars and lutes alongside the paintings to offer unique insights into the painters’ choice of instruments, and the difference between the real instruments and the way in which the painters chose to represent them. From 26 June until 8 September.

Michael Landy: Saints Alive - A series of large-scale kinetic sculptures bring a contemporary twist to the lives of the saints. Saints are more often associated with traditional sacred art than with contemporary work, but Michael Landy, current Rootstein Hopkins Associate Artist in residence at the National Gallery, has been inspired to revisit the subject for this exhibition. Landy’s large-scale sculptures consist of fragments of National Gallery paintings cast in three dimensions and assembled with one of his artistic hallmarks – refuse. He has scoured car boot sales and flea markets accumulating old machinery, cogs and wheels to construct the works. Visitors can crank the works into life with a foot pedal mechanism. Towering over you, the seven sculptures swivel and turn, in movements that evoke the drama of each saint’s life. Saints Apollonia, Catherine, Francis, Jerome, Thomas – and an additional sculpture that takes a number of saints as its inspiration – fill the Sunley Room alongside paper collages. From 23 May until 24 November.

Light - Quite modest collection of paintings on the subject. Containing Pissaro`s wet view of Montmartre at night and Degas` circus performer.

Sainsbury Wing - Painting from 1260 - 1510, including van Eyck, Pierro della Francesca, Botticelli, Leonardo, Bellini and Raphael.

West Wing- Paintings from 1510 - 1600, including Cranach, Michelangelo, Holbein, Bronzino, Titian, Veronese and El Greco.

North Wing - Paintings from 1600 - 1700, including Vermeer, Rubens, van Dyck, Claude, Rembrandt, Velazquez and Poussin.

East Wing - Paintings from 1700 - 1900, including Cezanne, Turner, Gainsborough, Constable, van Gogh, Seurat, Monet and Renoir.

 

For public enquiries please telephone 020 7747 2885.
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Advance ticket booking: visit www.nationalgallery.org.uk (booking fee)

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