Cultivated and cultivating

La Ghirlandata, by Dante Gabriel Rosetti

London Guildhall

Saw this painting at the Guildhall Art Gallery in London a couple of days ago. La Ghirlandata's face looked a lot greener in the flesh (so to speak) and I wondered if she had got her hands on some of Lizzie Siddal's laudanum before sitting for the painting. Alternatively, maybe Rosetti made the same mistake as Sir Joshua Reynolds, using pigments that deteriorated, leaving his sitters looking like they are either tubercular or teething. 

The Guildhall Art Gallery contains the remnants of Roman Londinium's amphitheatre, built 2000 years and already redundant by the time the Romans left the early 5th century. It also houses gigantic Victorian epic paintings, some of which are fabulously gruesome and melodramatic, such as Collier's Clytemnestra. 

The Guildhall was built during the first half of the 15th century. Lady Jane Grey and Thomas Cranmer were tried and convicted there, the former for treason, at the age of 16, the latter for heresy. 

The Guildhall is a short walk away from the Bank of England, redesigned by Sir John Soane, the architect son of a bricklayer whose remarkable house in Lincoln's Inn Fields is a national museum. Soane bequeathed the house and contents to the nation in 1833, stipulating that each item should remain where he so carefully placed it. The first two rooms behind the regency facade contain not one or two, but numerous perfectly intact ancient Greek vases. The vases are displayed on top of bookshelves containing his collection of over 7,000 books. Soane was adept at using light, mirrors and other devices to create an illusion of space and his skilful designs have created a fascinating maze in what otherwise could have been a claustrophobic cave. The place is positively stuffed with beautiful objects; ancient and aged architectural remnants, statues, paintings and furniture. You know Hogarth's A Rake's Progress? It's here; along with some of Canaletto's most significant paintings of Venice. 

The most wonderful aspect of the Soane Museum is the seemingly eclectic placement of objects. It reminds me of the old fashioned museums full of dusty oddments you visit in country towns, bereft of the annoying didactic interactive elements that are supposed to enliven an exhibition but tend to do the opposite. Remember the wonderful old museum of technology in Harris Street, Ultimo? Miles better than the Powerhouse. Yesterday I kept getting little frissons when I unexpectedly came across* random stone tudor roses or effigies of Plantagenet kings amongst the other treasures. 

After our tour of the museum (to which we will return-often), we wandered past Lincoln's Inn Old Hall, a banqueting hall and erstwhile Court of Chancery. Dickens described it as the "very heart of the fog" in the opening paragraph of Bleak House. It was the site of the interminable mentions of Jarndyce v Jarndyce in Dickens' great novel. 

Lincoln's Inn Old Hall

*(almost wrote "stumbled upon, but thought better of it. The first stumble and you'd be out. Clumsiness is death in a space like the Soane. I even had to secrete my handbag in a plastic bag lest it unwittingly become a chain and mace).