Alasdair Palmer

It is 450 years since the birth of William Shakespeare. The anniversary has been hard to avoid in this country, which is entirely appropriate. Shakespeare helped to shape not only our language but also our conception of character and our understanding of the human condition. Our experience of love, of facing death, of loss and of glory, contains echoes of Shakespeare, even if we hardly ever read him or see his plays. It is also 450 years since the death of Michelangelo. That anniversary has hardly been noticed here — although Michelangelo had as great an impact on visual arts in the West as Shakespeare has had on its literature. For centuries, every painter and sculptor felt the need either to emulate Michelangelo, or to escape his influence. Many still do.

‘When Titian paints eyes,’ observed Eugène Delacroix, who spent a lifetime admiring, studying and copying the Venetian artist, ‘they are lit with the fire of life.’ The truth of Delacroix’s aphorism is on striking display in the magnificent exhibition of Titian’s paintings at the Scuderie of the Quirinale Palace in Rome. The exhibition does not pretend to be a comprehensive collection of Titian’s works. It is merely a selection of some of his greatest masterpieces. The gorgeous young woman known simply as ‘La Bella’ looks at you with a penetrating, unblinking gaze, her eyes so hot with the fire of life that you feel sure that, in just one moment, she will move.

Medieval castles are generally dark and forbidding places that look as if they were built to prove the proposition that ‘form follows function’: the function was to be impregnable, and their high walls, crenelated and machicolated battlements, and slits for firing arrows instead of windows suggest that everything was subordinated to that dour defensive purpose. Castles are gloomy, intimidating buildings that sink the spirits. They were meant to intimidate and depress the population, and they succeeded. They still do. But we may have the wrong idea about castles. Recent research suggests that, in Italy at least, far from being solidly monochrome blocks, they may have been a riot of colour.

Alasdair Palmer questions the ill-conceived makeover of Chartres cathedral which robs us of the sense of passing time that is part of its fascination and mystery Should old buildings look old? Or should they be restored to a condition where they look as if they could have been put up yesterday? Those questions are raised in a particularly pertinent form by the work going on at one of the most beautiful and inspiring of all old buildings: Chartres cathedral in France. Most of Chartres cathedral dates from between 1194 and 1230, when the bulk of the colossal stone structure, with its nearly 200 stained-glass windows and thousands of sculptures, was built.

Rome contains many hidden treasures, but the most remarkable of the lot is concealed on the Caelian Hill, above the Colosseum, in the medieval monastery of Santi Quattro Coronati. It’s a cycle of frescoes dating from around 1250. It is extremely rare for painting from this period to survive anywhere, but it’s even rarer in Rome, where the rebuilding of the city by the Counter-Reformation popes destroyed almost all medieval painting. The paintings are in a vast vaulted gothic hall, the walls of which — about 800 square metres of them — were originally completely covered in frescoes. About half the original paintings remain: an earthquake, and the construction of additional windows, have destroyed the rest.

Alasdair Palmer marvels at a series of Veronese frescoes at Palladio’s Villa Barbaro It has included repairing the roof and strengthening the walls, as well as redecorating the interior, and it has taken almost as long as it took to build the original structure — but work on Andrea Palladio’s last building, the Tempietto at Maser, is finally complete. And what a glory it is! The building was finished in 1580, the year Palladio died, and he may never have seen it in its final form. It is the only church that he designed which isn’t in Venice. Marcantonio Barbaro, who commissioned it to be the chapel for his villa, was a long-time friend of Palladio.

If you went on holiday to Italy this year, you may have come back with a plate, a mug or a jug — an item or two of the painted pottery still handmade (at least sometimes) by craftsmen and women, mostly in Umbria, but also in the Marche, and which you can see in the shops in Siena and Florence and in other places in Tuscany. If you went on holiday to Italy this year, you may have come back with a plate, a mug or a jug — an item or two of the painted pottery still handmade (at least sometimes) by craftsmen and women, mostly in Umbria, but also in the Marche, and which you can see in the shops in Siena and Florence and in other places in Tuscany.