The National Gallery

One of the best things of living in a big city is the amazing amount of cultural activities that you can enjoy. Paraphrasing Frank Sinatra "Madrid is my Lady", and indeed Madrid is a big city full of life and exciting experiences. There you will find plenty of theatres, cinemas, museums and monuments at your disposal. To provide a few examples of some of the finest museums I will mention "El Museo del Prado", "El Museo Reina Sofía", "El Museo Naval" and "El Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza". Let's not forget the magnificent Royal Palace ("Palacio Real") and its fine art and weapon collections. In the weapon collection in particular there are some armors that belonged to the Emperor Charles V, who loved them so much that some are even more expensive than the paintings of Tiziano, his favourite painter.

Once I have explained this you will easily understand my expectations when I arrive at London, and how I was eager to visit so many places. Today I will describe shortly my impressions about The National Gallery, probably one of the finest collections in the world. Let' start.
This painting from Holbein titled "The Ambassadors" is one of my favourites, I have always liked it and experiencing the possibility of looking at it directly is like meeting someone that you knew before but you have never had the opportunity of speaking to him. This is a must in my opinion. From the screen it is quite easy to see the skull at the bottom of the painting, however, when you face it you must look at it from the right angle if you want to distinguish it.
I will continue with a great dutch painter, Jan van Eyck, and one of his most relevant paintings called "The Arnolfini Portrait". This painting is full of subtle details that deserve some special attention and reveal an impressive technique like the reflection in the mirror on the wall in which is possible to see the own painter inside. Max Escher, another fellow countryman of van Eyck, will achieve fame some centuries later for his similar geometric paintings.
Another painting due to the talent of Holbein, now a portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam, a very well known Renaissance humanist. I enjoy very much paying attention to details like costumes in other epochs, not precisely that Erasmus' is a very interesting one but it is the arquetype image of him that everyone has in his mind, and that's pretty interesting for me. However if you want to view an amazing costume let's follow with the next image.
This is the "portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan", the ruler of Venice. This masterpiece is the work of Giovanni Bellini considered the best painter at Venice in that moment. It is obviously one of the most highlighted paintings of the National Gallery, and it is not very difficult to understand why. The impressive quality of the details overwhelms the spectator, the amazing resemblance with a photograph is simply wonderful.
I have focused until now in portraits, perhaps because this paintings were the ones that most impressed my during my first visit. I know that I should go again to review other masterpieces and to enjoy the pleasure of walking between centuries of art and knowledge. However, I cannot finish this post without providing my patient reader with a couple of wonderful examples. This "Virgin and Child with Angels" is the anonymous work of a middle ages master.
To give an example of landscapes I will always chose Canaletto before the rest. He is the maker of half the romantic legend of Venice with his absolutely pretty paintings. They are full of light and life, they reflect a beautiful Venice with all of its canals full of small boats and gondolas. This piece is called "Party on the Day of Saint Roch".
Mythology. Mythology and religion two of the foundations to understand the art in the centuries before us. We have seen an example of religious painting before, now I provide an example of mythological painting. "Venus of the Mirror". This is the work of one of the best painters ever: Diego de Velázquez. I am not saying this because he was Spanish. I am saying that because he is in fact. I am not a chovinist. This picture is a wound in my heart. This picture belongs to the permanent collection of the National Gallery and is one of the few paintings of Velázquez that cannot be admired in "El Museo del Prado" in Madrid. Besides it was in a temporary loan when I went to the gallery so I was not able to enjoy it. Some years ago the National Gallery did an impressive exhibition of Velázquez and they managed to gather a lot of his paintings from different museums, it was said to be the "exhibition of the year in London".
Finally I cannot avoid mentioning one of the highlighted paintings that is so popular among the people. The "Sunflowers" by Vincent van Gogh. There are up to four versions of this painting and this is one of them.

I can continue writing about this for ages, but then it will be a copy-paste encyclopedia and I will bore you to death. That's not the purpose of this post. I just want to finish with a curious thought that came to my mind while I was writing. It is amazing the enormous amount of stuff that is possible to find surfing Internet, it reminds me when I was a child and I only had my encyclopedia to look for knowledge and how difficult it was to get good colour images of ancient masterpieces for example. Nevertheless I was able to learn a lot of things and to develop a vast culture without it, now I observe quite disappointed how the new generations have unbelievable
mediums at their disposal and how they do not realize (I am starting to talk like I was older, I am joking). So that I will finish recommending this online gallery that has thousands of good quality artworks for those who love art.

Note: This post is very close to the one of the same title that I published before in the Spanish version of this Blog.