Amazing Rare Things Queens Gallery the Sunday Times review
March 28th, 2008, 4:13 pm Hobbies Ideas
As he is a newish knight of the realm, it is right, methinks, that the great
television warrior Sir David Attenborough should elect to serve his
sovereign, and cheer up us serfs, by selecting a display of limning for the
Queen%26rsquo;s Gallery. And we are not talking here about any old limning. We are
talking about some of the most beautiful limning in the Royal Collection,
sights so rare and precious that they make a man coo like Columba
palumbus with pleasure. Forsooth, I hear you utter, what can this fool
be wittering on about? Is it not well known that Her Majesty has all manner
of great limnings in her castle, stuff by Rembrandt and stuff by Caravaggio,
the inkings of Raphael and Michelangelo, the illuminations of Velazquez,
Bruegel, Rubens and that Italian fellow with the birdy name? Oh yes, Titian.
Yes, she has all that. But did you know, serf, that tucked away in the royal
bottom drawer is also a fine hoard of early natural-history illustrations,
some of the first attempts by Europeans to record in detail the glories of
our kingdom and lots of others, too? It is into this royal treasure trove
that Attenborough of the lake, the jungle and the seashore has bravely
plunged. And emerged with some crackers.
A commoner like me finds it difficult to imagine why the Royal Collection
should possess these treasures. I understand the showy Faberg eggs for the
royal piano top, and the chunks of the Kohinoor in the royal jewellery box,
but in what circumstances did our appalling monarchs ever display enough
scientific acumen, or the necessary artistic interest, to gather up these
gorgeous records of the first microscopic staring?It appears they entered
the royal goodie box in various ways. The Leonardo drawings - 600 of them! -
were probably acquired by the long-haired wastrel Charles II, trying to make
up for the dispersal by Cromwell of Charles I%26rsquo;s magnificent cellar of
Italian art. Say what you like about George III - and some say he went as
nutty as Bertholletia excelsa, or the brazil nut - but by buying
2,500 drawings from the collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo, more than 250
watercolours of early America by Mark Catesby and 95 paintings of South
America by the mysterious Maria Sibylla Merian, he, more than anyone,
introduced a spirit of scientific inquiry into the expensive business of
amassing a royal collection. Then there was George IV, the podgy,
drink-loving king of the cuckolds. By Excalibur%26rsquo;s might, the man%26rsquo;s been
misunderstood! Not only did he build the wacky Brighton Pavilion, but, while
still Prince of Wales, he took possession of 150 watercolours of plants,
bugs and animals by Alexander Marshal, an unsung genius of horticultural
investigation and this display%26rsquo;s finest discovery.
The pageant has been christened, with plebeian directness, Amazing Rare
Things. Which is exactly what it contains. Attenborough%26rsquo;s greatest gift to
us, as a presenter, has been his utterly tangible delight in the sights he
brings us. That, too, is what distinguishes these early observers of
nature%26rsquo;s bounty. Although Leonardo, who opens the tourney, is a stern old
science teacher by instinct, and seems always to be more interested in
working out how things function than in dazzling us with their beauty, even
he cannot disguise his wonder at the things before him. I particularly
enjoyed a red-chalk drawing of a sprig of oak, heavy with acorns, which
started out as a piece of scientific observation, but seems somehow to have
acquired the warmth of a Christmas card. A fabulous sheet covered with tiny
thumbnails of an angry cat, hissing and splaying itself before an unseen
threat, is breathtakingly exact in its capture of hostile feline moods.
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