We hopped the tube to get to the National Gallery for our timed entry to the exhibition on Francisco di Zubarán, a 17th century Spanish painter.

His work was varied: still lifes

large altarpieces

smaller private devotional paintings

Some believe the man in the bottom right corner is a self-portrait

His son also became a painter specializing in still life paintings.

He repeated motifs and objects, many with symbolic significance.

He worked primarily in Seville and Madrid.

He became successful and employed a large workshop which produced many paintings that were sold in Spanish colonies in South America.

The significance and reason for this large head is a mystery.

We looked at some old favourites elsewhere in the Gallery: This Antonella da Messina painting of St Jerome in his Study was the topic of one of my written assignments for my art history course

Caravaggio detail

The National Gallery did a renovation of the Saintsbury Wing and there seem to be more paintings now hanging in the wing or at least, there were some paintings I had not seen before like the Luca Signorelli paintings hanging high on the wall.

We had lunch at Locatelli, the new restaurant at the National Gallery.

Food was pretty good: roasted chicken and spinach ricotta tortellone:

After lunch we went back to look around the Gallery some more. A recent acquisition in the Gallery is Parmigianino’s Vision of Saint Jerome

We also decided to sketch but sat on the bench, not the floor