104 THE NATIONAL GALLERY
Left The National Gallery’s Room 32, known as the Julia and Hans Rausing Room, featuring 17th century Italian paintings
Bottom
Giuseppe Gabrielli The National Gallery 1886, Interior of Room 32 1886
Oil on canvas 110 x 142 cm On loan from the
Government Art Collection © Crown Copyright: UK Government Art Collection
October 1940 and April 1941. Room 29 was one of the spaces that was badly damaged. Te room was repaired and reopened in 1950, redecorated with pale gold damask and German and Flemish paintings graced its walls. In the 1970s, architectural modifications were again made and these have all been stripped out.
Room 32: Te Julia and Hans Rausing Room – Italian 17th century painting When it opened in 1876, visitors were treated to colourfully painted friezes and lunettes, decorated with celebrated artists’ names and alternating designs of dolphins and winged
lions. You can get some idea of what Room 32 looked like in a painting by Giuseppe Gabrielli from 1886. Beneath white overpaint on each of 20 lunettes, alternating designs of winged lions and dolphins with the name of an artist have been revealed: these are mostly Italian, though Van Eyck, Holbein, Rubens and Rembrandt are also there. Tese lunettes have been reconstructed, with the exception of one dedicated to Titian, which was able to be uncovered completely and restored. As well as reinstating the dark red cloth to the walls (in line with the Crace brothers’ original design), the ornate painted frieze has been put back and the plaster decoration tip-
gilded with 23.5carat gold leaf. Te latest project has reinstated Barry’s original decorative design and modernised the out- of-date ventilation and lighting systems. As Christine Riding, director of
collections and research, has said: ‘From May 2025, as we draw to a close our bicentenary celebration year, all our gallery spaces will be open once again and we will redisplay our collection – as always, free to all, and the jewel in the gallery’s crown. Tis will be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to see all the National Gallery’s major works on display at the same time, with no loans going out of the gallery for a year, and display cases and other creative innovations will help have more art on display than ever before. While still broadly chronological, there will be a number of special displays and interventions pairing works from different time periods that respond to the same emotional themes or are inspired by one another. We hope that this will both refresh the collection for visitors that know the gallery well and bring out new experiences in favourite paintings, as well as providing a way into the gallery for those who have yet to discover us.’ Te pressure to blockbusterise everything, to hype every special exhibition as if it were world-changing, means that the pressures on galleries and museums everywhere to win ever-higher attendances is the only sure test of value that their paymasters, usually governments or its agencies, understand. Success is a calculus of footfall. By default, a new building project is merely seen as a device to lure and secure more visitors. We shall see over the next two years if the National Gallery has succeeded. It will not all rest on a new entrance area.
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