National Gallery

This morning I took the free DC Circulator bus from Georgetown to the stop closest the NGA and walked down to the mall. I hadn't realized there was also a parade at 11:45am, but streets were already being closed to auto traffic. As I passed the National Archives, people were taking photographs with their new certificates of citizenship outside. It was a touching scene; then I looked up, and on the roofline of the building saw a police spotter with binoculars, which chilled the sentiment out of it for me. This was the first time I've ever been in DC for the 4th of July, and there's no joy in it. Someone on Twitter commented a while back that one of the casualties of [insert the past few decades of right-wingers here] is that seeing the US flag on something automatically makes you suspicious, and it's true! Is that flag-adorned person simply a tourist enjoying the holiday, or are they a low-key fascist? Hard to say.

Anyway, the upside of the parade for me was that the museum was basically empty when I got there a little after 10, and stayed pretty empty until around 1 or so. The Tintoretto exhibition was beautiful, and I was impressed by how little you felt the gaps of all the material that didn't travel from Venice. Like Moroni at the Frick, it wasn't revelatory as a whole (the Tintoretto show at the Quirinale in Rome in 2012 made more of an impact on me, especially the stunning, scenographic effect of being able to view The Miracle of the Slave from an elevated balcony) since most of the works were ones I had seen before. The didactics were excellent. There were some familiar friends: Venus and Vulcan, which plays not only with sight (Mars hiding under the table, Vulcan fixated on Venus' thighs) but with smell, and sound (will the dog barking give Mars away?) The ridiculousness of Venus being naked while Mars evidently not only had time to hide under the table, but put on his armor and helmet, struck me more this time. Another favorite: Louis, George, and the Princess for the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi. Again, sight lines are fascinatng: the princess admires her reflecting in George's armor, he looks down her dress, Louis sweeps his robe away from the dead dragon fastidiously, and the horse is the only (living) creature that looks at us. The Madonna of the Treasurers: why is it just the middle procurator who's constructed so sketchily? Where is there blue paint running all down his crimson velvet robe? I don't know, but I love it. Totally new to me was St. Augustine Healing the Lame from Vicenza. The purple of the saint's cloak, as he appears in a cloud of blue, was sensational--the blue tones in the whole composition are just wonderful.

Over the course of an exhausting 4ish hours, I did the entire museum, including the East building, which I've never visited before. I decided to change up how I would usually prioritize my time. I did the 19th-century sculpture galleries first, then Tintoretto, then 19th-century painting, then lunch, then the East building with the modern and contemporary art, and then finally 16th-17th century European. Oh, how my feet hurt by the time I hit the Renaissance! Bellini's Feast of the Gods was out on loan, and will return later this month. Rembrandt's Self-Portrait was still wonderful, Leonardo's Ginevra de'Benci was still underwhelming and yet swarmed by tourists.

I spent the most time looking at van Gogh's Roses, which fairly vibrates off the canvas in undulating strokes of so many shades of blue, green, and white (which, in the flowers, was once pink). He used a dark blue first, to lay the ground line and outline the geometric shapes of leaves; occasionally you can see this paint lying against the bare canvas, surrounded by a canyon of heavy impasto of subsequent paint. It's so rhythmic to look at! From their website I learn that "Roses was painted shortly before Van Gogh's release from the asylum at Saint–Rémy. He felt he was coming to terms with his illness—and himself. In this healing process, painting was all–important. During those final three weeks of his recovery, he wrote his brother Theo, he had "worked as in a frenzy. Great bunches of flowers, violet irises, big bouquets of roses..." Is there any other artist whose brushstrokes are so fascinating, so meditative to follow? I was looking at a Turner, shortly thereafter, and there's certainly a freedom of brushstroke that you could see as a forerunner of van Gogh, but often the paint layers seem a unified swirl of explosive color, rather than individual remnants of physical gestures that you can trace with your eyes.

By 3pm, I was toast, and called an Uber to get back to Georgetown. That turned out to have been a great idea, since the skies opened up with a downpour shortly after we got on the road! Due to road closures, we had to take the highway, cross into Virginia, go past the Pentagon (so weird that it's right there) and back across the bridge to DC. My shoes got absolutely drenched walking from the gates back to the dorm, but I suppose it's been than choking on heat!

ETA: I forgot to mention Augustus St. Gauden's Shaw Memorial. I distinctly remember being brought to tears when I entered this room the last time I was at the National Gallery, and tears rose again this time. It's a powerful piece, even if you don't know the fate of the 54th Regiment. This time, though, I was more troubled that it is called, on the label, the Shaw Memorial, and that the inscription along the base only refers to Shaw's death in the battle, not of the catastrophic loss of his soldiers, the first African-American battalion. It's in no way surprising, of course, given the time period. Honestly, I had assumed Shaw's family had pushed for the monument, but apparently it was a member of the regiment, who had become a legislator, who pushed it forward. Still, I add here the text that appears on the back of the monument itself, so that the dead, all of them, may have their due:

The White Officers taking life and honor in their hands cast in their lot with men of a despised race unproven in war and risked death as inciters of servile insurrection if taken prisoners besides encountering all the common perils of camp march and battle. The Black rank and file volunteered when disaster clouded the Union Cause. Served without pay for eighteen months till given that of white troops. Faced threatened enslavement if captured. Were brave in action. Patient under heavy and dangerous labors. And cheerful amid hardships and privations. Together they gave to the Nation and the World undying proof that Americans of African descent possess the pride, courage and devotion of the patriot soldier. One hundred and eighty thousand such Americans enlisted under the Union Flag in MDCCCLXIII–MDCCCLXV