Thursday 12 June 2008

Cranach at Royal Academy

Visited the exhibition twice, but (typically) in the final days. Cranach as an artist strikes me as much less impressive than Grunewald (on the basis of the Karlsruhe/Colmar exhibitions earlier this year) or than Durer. That said, the RA exhibition gave a nice overview of a range of Cranach's genres and chronology. Someone (Roger Scruton?) commented that some artists have a restricted range of faces they rely on, instancing Boucher. I would add Cranach to this list. For example, the Eve of the famous Garden of Eden painting in London (Courtauld?) kept recurring in other paintings in the exhibition