Structured Spaces:
Architecture in National Gallery Paintings

Audio Transcript

Track 1 - Find the start location
This is an audio tour in celebration of Architecture Week that explores how architecture has been used in National Gallery paintings. It's available as a printed leaflet too, which has been supported by Arts Council England.

The tour starts with a painting in Room 16. Pick up a plan of the Gallery from one of the Information Desks that you'll find inside every entrance, and make your way to Room 16. Play the next track once you're there.

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Track 2 - Introduction - Room 16
Enter Room 16, and walk over to the furthest left hand corner. Look for a shadowy picture that has a man standing in an archway, with his back to the viewer. This is 'A Musical Party in a Courtyard', painted in 1677 by the Dutch artist Pieter de Hooch. It's a good place to start thinking about the role that buildings play in paintings - architecture is central to the way in which this picture works. For a start, it locates the action in a particular time and place: the buildings in the background are very similar to some constructed on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam in the 17th century. One house even has a carefully painted plaque giving the date it was built, 1620.

Architecture has also been used to divide the scene into different areas, a private courtyard area and the public street outside. These spaces then interact with the light to produce visual effects that add both beauty and meaning to the picture. Inside the shadowy courtyard, well-dressed people indulge in what could be shady activities, taking advantage of the privacy offered by their space to play music and flirt with each other.

They form a contrast with the man who stands apart, framed in the archway to the street and canal outside. He seems to be mesmerised by the public space outside the courtyard. He gazes at the elegant new world that the recently established Dutch Republic was building. The country had previously been a Spanish colony, and new building activity in its towns was part of a national agenda of regeneration. This is a cityscape so drenched in sunlight that you might almost believe that the streets were paved with gold - this is just the effect that the proud Dutch wanted to achieve.

The tour now takes you on a journey around the Gallery, exploring how and why architecture has been used in different paintings. How have artists used buildings to get us thinking?

The next painting is in Room 56. Use your plan to make your way there, and play the next track once you're in the room.

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Track 3 - The World of Interiors - Room 56
The focus painting in this room is straight ahead of you as you enter. It's the picture of a couple holding hands - this is the Arnolfini Portrait, painted by the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck in 1434.

Everything in this portrait is designed to tell us something about the couple's status. This is probably Giovanni Arnolfini, a wealthy Italian merchant who had settled in Bruges. He and his wife are dressed in sumptuous clothes, although they balance this grand display with modestly averted eyes.

What's really innovative about this portrait is the unusual decision to set it in a domestic interior - it's one of the earliest images of a couple welcoming us into their gracious home. It might look plain to us now, but this room would instantly have signalled prosperity to 15th-century Flemish viewers. The narrow view through the window tells us that this is a substantial brick building of several storeys: we can see the top of the cherry tree. The upper windows are glazed, and the floorboards are fashionably bare, all the better to show off the rare oriental carpet. The fixtures and fittings are all of the highest quality, and the room has been 'dressed' with casually strewn oranges, rare and costly at the time.

This is not however an exact view of one of Arnolfini's rooms. The mirror behind the couple shows in its reflection a doorway where the viewer is, so there's no room for a fireplace. This was a vital necessity in any room in this age before central heating, so its absence here tells us that this isn't a real room. Instead, we're looking at a carefully constructed interior which stages the sitters' self-image for the world to see. Why then do you think Arnolfini's muddy pattens, his outdoor shoes, have been left so prominently at the foot of the portrait?

The next painting is in Room 59. As you exit Room 56, take the first turning on your left, into Room 57. Now turn right, and walk straight ahead. Skip the next room you come to, and stop in the one after that - this is Room 59. When you're there, play the next track.

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Track 4 - Building in Symbolism - Room 59
Walk straight ahead then turn right, towards the doorway at the right hand side of the room. The painting we're looking at is just to the left of this doorway, a large picture with a street scene and a very ornamental building in it. This is Carlo Crivelli's 'Annunciation, with Saint Emidius', which he made in Italy in 1486.

Crivelli's meticulously drawn architecture is much more than a backdrop for this representation of the Virgin Mary being told by the archangel Gabriel that she will give birth to the son of God. There are realistic details that relate this scene to the world in which Crivelli's viewers lived, such as the dribbling mortar used to repair the wall in the background, or the caged birds and pot plants on every window sill. Other elements, however, remind viewers that something divine and mysterious is happening.

Architecture plays a key role. The richly decorated building that dominates the right side of the painting is there to create an enclosed space for the Virgin Mary, a room that keeps her separate and symbolises her purity. Not even Gabriel enters this sacred area: he waits in the street. Only the ray of golden light that brings the Holy Spirit penetrates a specially designed opening in the building to make contact with Mary. Crivelli has also given her room a door that opens onto the space occupied by the viewer, so that we too are given a form of access to her.

But why is a bishop showing Gabriel an architectural model of a city? The picture's label will tell you more.

The next painting is in Room 14. It's in another section of the Gallery, so use your plan to make your way there, and play the next track once you've arrived.

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Track 5 - Ruins and regeneration - Room 14
The painting you're looking for in this room is the large picture in the centre of one of the long walls, showing a group of people offering gifts to a small child, against the backdrop of a grand ruined building. This is 'The Adoration of the Kings', made some time between 1500 and 1515 by an artist named Jan Gossaert, who was based in Antwerp.

Wise men have come to worship the newborn Jesus - even though he's supposed to be a very young baby, artists traditionally show him as a toddler. However, Gossaert hasn't set this meeting in the simple stable described in the Gospels. Instead, the scene takes place in an elaborate ruin. This disintegrating architecture is full of symbolic significance: it represents the crumbling of the old, pre-Christian world, replaced by the new order that Christians believe arrived with the birth of Jesus.

Gossaert has used classical architectural details that he'd seen on a trip to Italy, such as rounded arches and pillars topped with decorative capitals. This both gives his ruins a believably ancient, pre-Christian character, and allows him to show off his well-travelled status. He's also used the complexity of this fantasy ruin to create hiding places for some of the figures. The man in red who hovers rather hesitantly in an archway behind Mary is Joseph, shown as a husband who has been somewhat sidelined by recent events. To his right, we catch a glimpse of another man looking through the doorway above the ox - this may be a portrait of the artist.

Why do you think Gossaert has included a view of a pristine gothic city through the central arch?

The next painting is in Room 20, at the back of the Gallery. Play the next track once you're there.

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Track 6 - The idealised city - Room 20
When you enter Room 20, head for the opposite end of the room. We're looking at the painting in the centre of the short wall. It's called 'Seaport with the Embarkation of Saint Ursula', and it was painted in 1641 by a French artist named Claude, who spent his working life in Rome.

The subject of this painting is Saint Ursula, though you have to look quite closely at the picture to find her - she's the woman in yellow carrying a flag. Having made a pilgrimage to Rome, Saint Ursula and her eleven thousand virgin companions are setting off for home. The bows and arrows they carry are the only sign of the bloodshed that lies ahead of them - according to legend they were killed by Huns on their return journey. Claude has focused instead on the majestic surroundings of the port from which he imagined they departed: the sunlit architecture is what really interests him.

The artist was inspired by actual buildings which he saw around him in Rome in the 17th century. For example, the circular structure at the left is based on Bramante's Tempietto di San Pietro, and the palace next to it is related to the Palazzo Cancellaria. The end result is however imaginary: invented classical buildings drawn together into a harmonious composition. The vertical lines of pillars are carefully placed so that they balance and echo the masts of the ships in port. An improbably large tree on the right is used as a counterweight to the buildings on the left. Both direct our eyes towards the focal point of the picture, the rising sun.

What ideas about civilisation do you think might be suggested by this artist's use of architecture?

The next stop is Room 34, over on the east side of the Gallery. Play the next track once you've arrived.

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Track 7 - A brave new world? - Room 34
At one end of this room are two paintings of ships on stormy seas. Stand facing them, then turn to your left. The focus picture is in front of you, a painting of a railway bridge against a misty background. The British artist J.M.W. Turner did this in 1844. It's called 'Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway'.

A dark structure slashes across the golden haze that represents the River Thames. This is still recognisable as the Maidenhead Viaduct, taking the Great Western Railway from Exeter and Bristol towards London. In the 1840s it was a controversial new piece of industrial architecture, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Turner has buried its heavy piers in luminous clouds of colour, so that the viaduct seems almost to float above the water it spans. Despite this, it remains a substantial structure, perhaps even a menacing form: the steep angle of perspective used makes both the viaduct and the train appear to hurtle out towards the viewer.

How do you think Turner has depicted this brand new industrial architecture and the technology it supports? Does it seem like a scar on the landscape, particularly in comparison with the subtle outline of the road bridge on the left of the picture? Or do you think Turner has presented it in a more positive way, excited by the dramatic potential of this latest industrial achievement?

The last painting on this tour is in Room 43. Walk to the opposite end of the room you're in now, and enter the next room. Then turn right, and walk through a small lobby to arrive in Room 43. Play the next track once you're there.

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Track 8 - London landmarks - Room 43
Go into the middle of the room and turn to your right. The painting we're looking at is the top one of two hung together. It shows the Thames below Westminster, which the French artist Claude Monet painted around 1871 when he was staying in London. He was one of a number of artists who'd come here to escape the Franco-Prussian war.

This painting captures something of 'modern' London life in the 1870s, from the tugs and barges that puff up and down the river to the people enjoying their leisure time, strolling along the newly constructed Victoria Embankment. The instantly recognisable silhouette of Big Ben identifies the shadowy buildings in the background as the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge.

However, Monet seems to have been primarily interested in London's architecture for the opportunities it gave him to represent the city's atmosphere - the smoggy air and muted light that bounces softly off each structure's surface. The dark wooden pier that projects into the river in the foreground sets a benchmark: everything behind it is progressively lost in veils of grey.

What's the effect of the contrast between the ghostly spires of the Houses of Parliament and the simple interlocking beams of the pier? What about the way that the bold shape of the pier seems to disintegrate into the choppy brushstrokes of the paint that depicts its reflection?

This is the end of this audio tour, but of course there are many more paintings in the National Gallery's collection that feature architecture. Try asking yourself what effect the buildings in any painting have, and how that picture would be changed if the architecture was different or not there at all.

If you'd like to find out more about paintings in the National Gallery, there are several things you can do. When you're in the Gallery, try out ArtStart, our touch-screen multimedia resource for visitors - look on your gallery plan for the location of ArtStart terminals. When you're back home, you could explore other pictures through our website, at www.nationalgallery.org.uk. Both resources have zoom facilities, so you can really get in close to see reproductions of pictures in fantastic detail.

Thanks for listening, and hope to see you again soon!

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