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September 2014

Vol. 156 | No. 1338

The First World War

Editorial

At the Imperial War Museum

There is no possibility of anyone escaping the centenary commemorations of the First World War. Events marking its start on 4th August 1914 were already underway earlier this year and many more are planned to mark the years leading to the centenary of the Armistice of 1918. Although the focus of these events is on the countries closely involved in the War from its beginning, the commemorations are worldwide.

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Free review

Architecture in Italian Renaissance painting

WHILE LINEAR PERSPECTIVE is synonymous with the emergence of a new language of painting in fifteenth-century Italy, it is surprising that the architecture that appears in the art of that period has received little systematic study. Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting at the National Gallery, London (to 21st September), gathers together works predominantly drawn from the Gallery’s permanent collection, turning the spotlight on the role played by architecture in these works. Deft use of the Sunley Room has allowed the curators to arrange the show in four main sections. These consider in turn how architecture serves formally to structure the spatial construction of the composition, how buildings offer ‘entry points’ to the pictorial field, how architecture serves to situate the depicted scene in a real (remote or contemporary) setting, and finally how archi­tecture serves to create the sense of a distant historical past. 

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Free review

The Building of England. How the history of England has shaped our buildings, S. Thurley

This is, by some reckoning, Simon Thurley’s fifth ‘big book’ – no mean achievement even before one considers the eight smaller books he has written or edited, as well as numerous scholarly articles and essays. All this Thurley has managed while charting a professional career that has seen him move from Historic Royal Palaces, via the directorship of the Museum of London, to his current role as Chief Executive of English Heritage – and this is not to mention the considerable broadcasting career he has also sustained during this time. Thurley has brought all this accumulated experience and expertise to bear in tackling a survey as ambitious as ‘a history of English buildings [. . .] the history of the nation through what it has built’. The result is a meticulously assembled, wide-ranging and well-written book that displays all his talents in describing the social lives of buildings in a lively and engaging way.

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    John Lavery: an intrepid war artist

    By Angela Weight

    A discussion of Official War paintings by John Lavery, in particular his depictions of naval manoeuvres and dockyards around the British coast.

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    Eye-witness accounts and silent dissent: The Burlington Magazine during the First World War

    By Barbara Pezzini

    The editorial position of The Burlington Magazine during the War years in comparison with other art journals of the time.

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    Stanley Spencer and the Acts of Mercy – a suggested additional source for the Sandham Memorial Chapel

    By Erika Langmuir

    A new source for Stanley Spencer’s paintings in the Sandham Memorial Chapel, Burghclere, completed in 1932.

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    Austria-Hungary’s War: the 1914–18 Centenary in Vienna

    By Elizabeth Clegg

    A review/article on various recent shows in Vienna marking the centenary of the First World War.