Royal Art of Seduction ; in the Second of a Two-Part Review, Our Critic Returns to the Masterpieces of Italian Art On Show at the Queen's Gallery

Summary

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FROM the very moment that he enters the first room of the Queen's Gallery i n

Buckingham Palace, the far-sighted visitor may c a t c h a g l i m p s e o f Potiphar's wife, almost naked, as her frustrated seduction of young Joseph he of the technicolour dreamcoat dissolves from sexual passion into the deceit and treachery of the powerful woman scorned. Through this room, across the vestibule, and on to the far wall of the second gallery many yards away, we see only the extreme left of Orazio Gentileschi's life-size masterpiece, the diagonal thrust of a bare leg amid what seems a wind-blown cloud of drapery, but even so little tells something of the tale. Walking slowly on, refusing to be diverted by the 16th-century Renaissance masterpieces to left and right, ignoring Titian and Giorgione, eyes closed to Parmigianino and Bronzino, to the steadfast, Gentileschi's narrative is revealed inch by inch, the sense of buttocks under the blue cloth, a naked back, another naked knee, all continuing the diagonal thrust that began with the toes in the corner, and then a naked shoulder and under an outstretched arm the sight of big high breasts and one proud nipple, and, at last, the woman's face.

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Royal Art of Seduction ; in the Second of a Two-Part Review, Our Critic Returns to the Masterpieces of Italian Art On Show at the Queen's Gallery

We are barely a third of our way into the picture, but with this face we are at least two-thirds into the tale. Hers is an expression of cold anger, not of pleading, hers the face of a vengeful woman uttering a deadly threat "Lie with me," the Bible puts it, "for if you do not, I shall cry rape." And cry it she did. And as we close in on the canvas, we see that she holds a man's coat in her outstretched hand, and when we pass through the gallery door the whole drama is unfolded, for on the extreme right is Jose...

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