Christ Feeding The Five Thousand. © V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum
Exhibition Review: Sophie Allen visits Sheffield’s Millennium Galleries, to admire the artworks on view in Treasures from the V&A, running until May 25 2009.
A new exhibition at Sheffield’s Millennium Galleries surveys over a thousand years of European art, using a selection of artworks from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s vast collection.
Treasures from the V&A showcases sculpture, metalwork and ceramics from AD400-1600, focusing on the late Medieval and Renaissance periods, and aims to provide a visual spectacle, while looking beyond surfaces to examine the role of history in transforming a work of art into a treasure.
Although this is an artistic period usually associated with wealth and excess, the collection is surprisingly low-key. We are so used to seeing Renaissance art littered around churches and stately homes that it’s easy for them to lose their impact. Here, though objects stand alone and are invigorated by being taken out of their usual contexts.
Reliquary Casket of St Thomas Becket © V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum
Giovanni Pisano’s Figure of the Crucified Christ is a tiny ivory carving, which would seem insignificant next to larger, more extravagant pieces, but on its own is a delicate and moving representation of an iconic image.
This subtlety is seen in even the most historically significant objects. The star piece in the exhibition is undoubtedly the Leonardo Da Vinci Codex Forster 1, one of Da Vinci’s notebooks showing his famous mirror writing and several mathematical calculations. Yet the notebook isn’t treasured for its own beauty but instead for what it contains and the achievements it symbolises.
Codex Forster 1, Leonardo da Vinci. © V&A Images / Victoria and Albert Museum
There is also a collection of distinctly ordinary embroideries, which seem trivial until you find out that Mary Queen of Scots made them during her imprisonment in Sheffield Castle in the 1570s and 80s.
Revealing the history behind a work of art is a thread that runs throughout the exhibition, so that while apparently insignificant objects are illuminated by their histories, pieces that stand out for their obvious beauty gain added meaning when the stories behind them are revealed.
The Symmachi Panel, Roman Empire. © V&A Images / Victoria and Albert Museum
The Reliquary Casket of St Thomas Becket, dating from 1180 and alleged to once house relics of the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury, is an exquisite piece of art that also memorialises a brutal and bloody moment in English history, Thomas a Becket’s assassination in 1170.
Treasures from the V&A is loosely divided into three themes, ‘Piety and Devotion’, Sections titled ‘Display and Status’ and ‘The Secular World’, look at the often contradictory ways in which art has been used.
A selection of stained glass panels from 12th century France, depicting the feeding of the five thousand and two of the temptations of Christ, illustrate the dual nature of art in this period, as it is both a decorative and a practical object, acting as a visual reminder of biblical stories in a pre-literate age.
Two Standing Prophets, Hubert Gerhard. © V&A Images / Victoria and Albert Museum
In other pieces, decoration is itself the purpose. The Two Standing Prophets, gilt bronze statues belonging to a rich European banking family, are religious artefacts designed to display the owner's wealth as well as their piety.
To complement the V&A collection there are also objects which reveal Sheffield's own history. Fragments and tiles and stone carvings from Beauchief Abbey and silverware from Bishops House, the oldest surviving timber framed house in the area, may not match the treasures in the rest of the exhibition but are a fascinating reminder of the history on our own doorstep.
Winged Putto with Fantastic Fish, Donatello. © V&A Images / Victoria and Albert Museum
These sections on Sheffield’s history add extra interest to what would otherwise be a very small collection, however it does create the impression of two distinct exhibitions that have been pieced together.
The thematic, rather than chronological, approach also means the exhibition doesn’t always have a strong enough narrative to effectively draw together artefacts from such a large period of history.
The combination of rare, exquisite pieces and items with fascinating stories behind them, means there plenty to appreciate and whether it’s feasting on the visual splendours on offer or finding a thrill in admiring Da Vinci's notebooks or Mary Queen of Scots' letters - there is a sense that these artefacts represnt real history in the making.
