An afternoon at the Gemäldegalerie with one of my favourite museum partners, Robert. We spent a lot of time in front of Jean Fouquet’s Das Diptychon von Melun — which I will photograph, ’cos I have to go back for In Neuem Licht. I don’t think I can imagine the extent of their stockrooms. They’ve got 70 works on display in the central atrium, all deep blue walls and the gentle murmur of the long fountain, and any of them could easily win a fight for a hanging spot on in permanent collection (where I’m pretty sure some of them occasionally reside).
I’m fighting my urge to photograph everything in a museum at the moment. I wasn’t going to point camera at anything, but then I saw a trio of northern European mediæval Die Anbetung der Könige, and … especially when one of them is a copy of the very famous Hieronymus Bosch one, which hangs in Museo del Prado. It’s like I’ve already seen it, I know it so well. So I’m going to try blogging individually some of the pieces I like, and I have to go back anyway, ’cos it was all kinda rushed with the camera. This one, then, is a copy of Bosch’s Adoration of the Magi or The Epiphany, from around 1550, on oak, Kat.-Nr. 1223. It’s been in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s collection since it was acquired in 1837 from General Otto August Rühle von Lilienstern. I’d love to go to Madrid and see the original, it’s one of my favourites, along with Pieter Bruegel de Oude’s unfinished De Aanbiddung der Wijzen.
