Saturday was spent at the National Gallery in the company of friends and astounding Medieval paintings. En route to the gallery (an impromtu visit), we gawped at an abandoned nose stuck bubble-gum-like about a quarter of the way up the inside wall of Admiralty Arch.

Death usually stares back unashamedly in Medieval paintings. From political spin to seraphim, highbrow to shaved eyebrows, perspectives contorta (okay, maybe this word doesn’t exist), to snail-symbolism, gold & god, graceful harts, folded robes in profusion pink, to pre trans-fat Medieval flesh overburden by Medieval living and open wounds- how can one not be over-powered by all this visual? A painting by Piero di Cosimo called The Fight between the Lapiths and the Centaurs provoked much animated discussion. It’s a saucy violent wedding painting hot enough to fire-up middle-aged mortal loins. The painting appears to be one big phallic fightathon. Perhaps it may explain how the nose ended up on Admiralty Arch. Meanwhile, downstairs in the National Gallery’s pleasing Dinning Room, a fine looking leg of Parma ham remained as yet, unsliced.

Here’s a rough incomplete sketch of The Fight between the Lapiths and the Centaurs:

And here are my mates cunningly disguised as Middle Aged symbols. Don’t they look cute.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Cartoons and Illustration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.