Joan at the Victoria and Albert

We left the V&A after having lunch, and headed back across the City to the National Gallery. We took a bus again this time, as it was still cold and icy, and my dogs were beginning to whine and complain. We saw a fabulous exhibit at the NG - The Sacred Made Real - which was based on the idea that sacred sculpture in 17th century Spain had a major influence on the paintings of the time. There were some amazing works in the collection - many, many paintings by Velaszuez and Zurbaran that I had never seen, even in reproduction, and life-sized sculptures of similar topics, sculpted by artists whose names are definitely not household words (so I won't tell you what they are). A very interesting point to me was the fact that the sculptors were not allowed, by law, to paint their sculptures, they had to turn them over to painters to do. The painters themselves, including Velasquez and Zurbaran, apparently were influenced in creating their paintings by the experience of working on the sculptures. It was a pretty amazing show - very surprising to me, as even having studied art of the period and place, I was quite unfamiliar with the religious sculpture. There is so much to see in the National Gallery, but we were a bit tired, and Peter still had one exhibit to see for his work, so we decided to go back to the hotel, and take a little rest before going on.

On our way back we walked along Bloomsbury Square, which is just at the end of our little street, and I was amazed that the sidewalks were totally covered in ice. It was so odd - in some areas there would be lots of ice, in other areas the sidewalks would be clear, and in other areas it seemed like the homeowners or business proprietors had thrown just plain dirt out onto the sidewalk. It was hard walking, and not a lot of fun, because I had to watch the sidewalk most of the time and not enjoy the buildings, the passersby, or the shop windows, but just watch the sidewalks for ice!! And, continually swivel my neck at streetcorners to be sure I was looking in the correct direction for oncoming traffic. I do get used to the traffic patterns pretty quickly, probably from having lived in New Zealand, but the first day it was tiring!