Oxford proudly boasts, undoubtedly, one of the best cultural scenes of any city in the United Kingdom. From the Ashmolean to the Natural History Museum there is no shortage of ways to spend an afternoon soaking up centuries of history; all without spending a penny. There is, however, a lesser-known and equally exciting place which few students (or tourists) have yet to discover.
The Christ Church Picture Gallery has free entry for Oxford students. It offers a chance to view one of the most impressive college art collections, with pieces spanning the 14th to 18th centuries, beautifully displayed in a semi-subterranean gallery designed by Sir Phillip Powell and Hidalgo Moya. Tucked away in the back of the college, it is easy to miss the gallery as visitors must enter through Canterbury Gate, opposite Oriel and, from there, signs guide you to the entrance.
The gallery comprises three distinct rooms that guide visitors through the spaces, beginning with the earliest works. Some of the most captivating pieces are a number of fragments extracted from Scenes of the Lives of Hermits, a sprawling work of the Tuscan and Florentine Schools created c.1440-1450. Composed of tempera on panel this work is a prime example of the more you look, the more you see. There are countless figures depicted, each illustrating various stories and allegories from the Bible. Amongst them, it is possible to spot monks, saints, and comically reptilian devil figures, which have maintained their brilliant detail and colour despite being almost six hundred years old.
As you progress through to the second room of the gallery, prepare to be struck by perhaps the most spectacular, and maybe grotesque, painting in the collection at Christ Church, Annibale Carracci’s The Butcher’s Shop (c.1583). The painting is monumental in scale at almost 2×3 metres and it depicts the interior of a butcher’s shop with two butchers, possibly the artist’s brother Agostino Carracci and cousin Ludovico Carracci. The Carracci family were influential in the rejection of the Mannerist style and were crucial in altering the course of Italian art. The importance of direct observation from nature, as stressed by Carracci is reflected in The Butcher’s Shop where he employs a limited palette of earthen colours instead of the brilliant unnatural hues associated with the prevailing Mannerist style. The painting is also of note for its depiction of tradesmen in a dignified, ceremonious demeanour which is distinguishable from earlier satirical everyday subjects.. The Butcher’s Shop takes pride of place in its current spot in within the gallery, yet for a long time the painting was hung in the college kitchen before it was recognised for its artistic value in the 20th century
Filippino Lippi’s The Wounded Centaur (late 15th century) continues the evolutionary trajectory seen in Renaissance art. Lippi, a close associate of Botticelli, belonged to a cohort of Florentine artists who pioneered innovative approaches to painting. Notably, the painting devotes significant attention to the background, featuring caves and reflections in the sea. This reflects a newfound interest in depicting geological formations, a departure from the typical focus of Renaissance painting on the primary subject. Moreover, Lippi’s rendition of the story diverges from the traditional narrative found in Fasti Book V by Ovid. In Ovid’s telling of the story the centaur Chiron sustains a fatal wound while examining the poisoned arrows of Hercules, tainted by the venom of the mythological Hydra. In Lippi’s version, the centaur is shown inspecting not the arrows of Hercules but the quiver of Cupid, which is perhaps the artist’s warning to the viewer about the dangers of love.
The gallery not only plays host to impressive pieces on canvas but also on paper. Amongst the collection are works by well-known artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci. Few national museums can claim to house works by such giants of Renaissance drawing. For this reason, amongst the many others, it is surprising how few students that I have spoken to have given this hidden gem of a gallery a visit. If you find yourself wondering what to do this Trinity, the Christ Church Picture Gallery is open Thursday to Monday and entrance is completely free for members of the University, where tickets can be booked online.
Reading political autobiographies, so you don’t have to
Publishing a book has long been a trend for those leaving government in the UK. Memoirs and autobiographies are naturally intriguing, offering us the promise of a peek behind a curtain. We understand that our perception of characters and events is being managed or ‘spun’, yet we crave authenticity, because we know it’s in short supply. This gives politicians an opportunity to sell us their perspectives and narratives on their time in office. In my hastily scribbled notes the names Blair, Cameron, Hancock, Truss & Johnson leap out. When I consider the legacies of this collection, the emotional cocktail is complicated. The adjective “breathtaking” emerges, begging for unprintable collocations.
In the slow-motion car crash of British politics, how do we feel about politicians profiting from their efforts at self-justification? Tony Blair neatly sidestepped this criticism by donating the profits from A Journey to the armed services’ charity the Royal British Legion, who presumably appreciated the money all the more after Afghanistan and Iraq. It seems unlikely that Blair wrote the book for his critics, given the strength of feeling among them. I suspect it was written for his supporters, and himself. If any of you are wondering, it turns out that Blair thinks he did quite well in the circumstances, actually.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, so does Cameron. Dave would have us believe that the Brexit referendum was a political inevitability. What’s most interesting about his effort For the Record is that he is very aware of the impact of the errors of his leadership. Disappointingly, he has forgiven himself rather more quickly and easily than the country has. For the record, For the Record is an astonishingly naive title. Sorry Dave, your record definitely speaks for itself. Similarly, Matt Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries are not, in fact, diaries because diaries are written at the same time as the events they describe, and he is quite clear in his book that it wasn’t. With what he probably believes is bravery, Hancock is emphatic that he makes no apologies for his handling of the pandemic. This begs the question of whether anyone else thinks he ‘handled’ the pandemic.
Liz Truss’ tenure (“term” would be stretching things) has been mainly known for its brevity and severe damage to the economy. The title of her account Ten Years to Save the West completely turns these defining characteristics upside down. Are we to believe that if Liz were elected President of the Western World with ten years of grace it would somehow go well? Much has been made of her husband’s prediction that “it would all end in tears”, Liz mainly seems to attribute her troubles to saboteurs inside her party, the civil service, the Bank of England, and possibly even the nature of reality itself. There’s an old saying that Liz may need to hear, when you point a finger, you generally find three pointing back. In defiance of constitutional convention, she reveals details of the last confidential audience she had with Queen Elizabeth II shortly before the latter’s death (almost certainly completely unrelated). After hearing an outline of Truss’ economic ideas, the most experienced diplomat on planet Earth cautioned her PM to “pace yourself”, we are told. The vignette ends with: “Maybe I should have listened.” ‘Maybe?’ said everyone else under their breath.
This admittedly cherry-picked selection of the modern British political memoir strongly suggests a tendency to the self-serving. As an optimist, I feel sure that the efforts to ignore the critics and rewrite history are unsuccessful. I wonder how many of the people who would ‘rather go for a pint with Boris’ will not only buy the as-yet unpublished memoir but also go along with the picture it paints. I also wonder what a psychologist would make of this literary genre. I’m willing to go out on a limb and make some predictions. BJ’s book will probably justify his reportedly seven-figure advance payment, and will certainly attempt to justify the choices its author made in power. The title will be grandiose. The portrait will be of an embattled and misunderstood lone wolf, doing their best against impossible odds and going down fighting. It is always thus. There will be enough inflammatory and previously unseen detail to capture our interest briefly, but the book will misfire, and will not quite manage to achieve its true goal of shielding the ego and record of its author from the implacable weight of history.
These books are too often a magic mirror for their true audience, the author, reflecting a parallel reality that lets them off the hook. It used to be a cliché that all political careers end in failure, politicians were expected to accept their blunders and personal lapses. In contrast, many ex-PMs and ministers today display a kind of narcissistic defensiveness, focused on obscuring, excusing and positioning themselves. I prefer the millennial tendency towards emotional intelligence, the understanding that mistakes need to be owned and genuine apologies are not qualified in the same breath they are made. Ultimately, these autobiographies all reveal and confirm plenty about the people who write them, just not necessarily the things they would prefer us to know.