I know, it’s been open for a while, but I wanted at least to put a few words to my last show at the National Gallery in here. Organized in collaboration with my excellent colleague Maria Alambritis, who took the lead on it it when we started planning sometime in 2023, it focuses on the Gallery’s monumental, and monumentally weird, altarpiece, so-called “Vision of St Jerome” (1526-7), which recently emerged from a decades-long restoration, expertly handled by another fantastic colleague, Larry Keith, Head of Conservation at the Gallery. Alongside it, we gathered a selection of the many surviving drawings Parmigianino made for the painting, which in addition to offering a showcase of spirited, virtuoso drawing of real originality and startling imagination, helps one understand the artist’s mutational creativitiy.

Parmigianino was the artist I first wanted to created an exhibition around when I started at the Gallery in 2013 and although the great monograph I dreamt about never happened, I am pleased that we were able to put together this show, even if I, having left London, regret not being able to go reguarly. If you’re in London, do what I can’t — go see it! And if not, do look up our catalogue.

Also, check out Maria’s presentation on the show at the Italian Institute on 6 February. The show runs till 9 March.

Over the past months, I’ve been working with colleagues across the National Gallery, particularly my two curatorial colleagues Maria Alambritis and Charlotte Wytema, on a new temporary presentation of a selection of the Gallery’s Venetian paintings from Giovanni Bellini to Titian, roughly. The display was conceived to inaugurate the newly – and beautifully – refurbished room 29 as part of our bicentenary NG200 celebrations. It is poignant, I think, that room 29 which first opened in 1930 was originally designed precisely for the Venetian paintings.

Although a collection display, our presentation is organised like a exhibition, presenting the story of Venetian painting in the period, the lives of the artists, the social, religious and political context with a view to elucidating why it was so pivotal in the development of Western painting, collected so assiduously in Britain (and elsewhere) in the nineteenth century and thus why it is so core to the National Gallery’s collections.

In the video above, my colleague Carlo Corsato introduces a number of the key players in the organisation of the display, including of course yours truly. Do come have a look if you’re in London and let me know what you think!