Photo Essay: Victoria and Albert Museum, Part II

I had to meet a Canadian friend at V&A. As it so happens, she is over here to research some very interesting areas, such as the evolution of Indian dress, but that’s for another time. Still, I was a wee bit early and she was a wee bit late, so I ended up walking around to check some of the galleries. You might have seen my previous post on V&A. Just like that one, this post is divided into parts to reflect the various interesting bits that I saw here. Be warned, this is a long post. You might want to go straight go the slide show if all you want to see are the pictures.
The Library
 

The library was lovely. It was absolutely chock a block with lovely old bound books from bottom to top. It has two things that speak to me,  first is the soft light, not the harsh white light that so many libraries have. This soft light just provides a great ambience to the entire reading and browsing experience. The second thing that this library has, is this fascinating scent of old book. This room had that smell by the ton. I walked in and was immediately entranced. They have lovely displays of how different kinds of bindings were made and there is an absolute shed load of art books. I could not take more pictures as the librarian lady was giving me those scary looks…

The Smaller Sculptures
Then I moved into the smaller sculpture gallery. It is almost like a bridge over two galleries which house the larger sculptures, (well, plaster casts) but more about that later. This smaller gallery is almost like a demonstration gallery with examples of small sculptures sculpted from various types of materials using various techniques. Also the historical development of sculpture can be seen. You can see wood, ivory, clay, bronze, etc. Here are some of the sculptures which spoke to me.


This is, if I am not wrong, made out of wood. Brilliant work, you can see the furrowed brow of the pope, the tilted head, the different shaped eyes showing evidence of a stroke, the clothing being a counterpoint to the face skin tones.

Here’s another one of an old man. He looks a bit miserable, but look at the face, it's furrowed and deeply lined with age. And it's a tiny thing, hardly couple of inches tall. Can you imagine somebody doing such a delicate piece of work on such a small thing? Amazing. You can see the bones, and the way the ivory has discoloured, it makes it look like you can see the chest hair even. That one definitely spoke to me. 


The final one which spoke to me was this ivory carving, about 6 inches tall, showing a group of nymphs and a warrior in a woodland scene with a cherub at the bottom. The work is extremely detailed, the muscle tone is very clearly defined. You can make out the difference between the skin tones of the male and female bodies and the leaves are amazingly detailed. When I started to steam up the glass cabinet and make skin oil marks, I knew I had to leave.


The Staircase


I wanted to go to go see the big sculpture gallery so I had to walk down the staircase when I spotted another staircase. Say what? why on earth would you have a staircase in a museum? A non functional one at that?

 

 
It's a very intricately carved staircase out of wood, obviously for some building of 3 stories. Very very imposing, very warm and brilliant.

The Plaster Casts of Large Sculptures
Now come the big ones. The idea behind this is good, the museum has collected together plaster casts of a whole bunch of famous sculptures and placed them into this room. It's a very good idea, but why on earth is the lighting so poor? It is dark as the pits.

One gallery is closed, but you can see our man David standing there. But the other gallery was open. 

 
It is overshadowed by the plaster cast of Trajan’s Column, in two pieces. It's also missing the statue of St. Peter on the top. I guess it would have been too big to fit into the hall otherwise. Funnily enough, I have seen the original and it is nowhere as imposing as I recall compared to this plaster cast. Strange, but there you have it.

Peeking down at the gallery.

A plaster cast of some church up in Scotland somewhere.

   
This was truly beautiful. It's a Tabernacle in stone near Brussels designed by Cornelis Floria around 1552. It is fantastically detailed, the scope of the carving is vast, on so many levels. Every angle you look has something which attracts your attention. One day I need to visit this place and check it out properly, as there is simply not much information out there in books. Absolutely beautiful. But as you can see, the light was horrible, it was not showing the true beauty of this wonderful sculpture. 




Here is the facade of the famous Santiago de Compostela. 

 

Here is a bunch of rather frolicsome girls and cherubs as a representation of summer by Claude Michel put up in a house in Paris in the late 18th century. Not much is known about this but I liked it. The girls look good, they are seemingly there to have a right old time. 

 

This is a bronze tomb in Germany for some churchman somewhere. The contents are not as important as the very impressive metal work. Very fine work pouring metal like this. It could have done with some dusting though.

 

 

Guess what? This is a statue of St. George slaying the dragon, in bronze, and it is currently in the National Gallery in Prague. Funny, St. George is the Patron Saint of England and a lovely statue like this is in Poland, while we only have a dark plaster cast here in London…Anyway…
Next time, I am going to go check out and spend some serious time in the South Asian Gallery.