Westminster Reference Library
Much like when Lucy discovered Narnia, or Mary discovered The Secret Garden, I discovered Westminster Reference Library and it is magical in its own right.
If your legs were long enough, roughly 80 ft each - then you could feasibly have one foot at the door of both this Library and the National Gallery.
A book collection curated through osmosis, an ambient literary extension of the gallery itself.
The book I spent most time with, Fra Filippo Lippi - Life and Work with a Complete Catalogue , shows his painting of the Annunciation that hung in a Medicean Palace which now resides just steps away.
A few notes from the Lippi book that I scribed down in my trusty journal:
an Early Renaissance painter, Lippi was a pioneer of psychological realism, discarding medieval traditions
colour design and emotional characterisation were more important to Lippi than any contemporary Florentine artist except for Donatell
Scorci - radical foreshortening
his career began in an artistic community dominated by Gothic style and Medieval craft procedures and ended in self-consciously intellectual community that admired ancient models and experimentation
during the 1440s, architectural settings replaced the gold grounds standard till then
personal “vision” was still subordinate to orthodoxy of theme as that is most broadly understood
Fra Angelico’s compositions were simple, Lippi’s elaborate - Angelico painted for Observant Dominicans and other clients under the rule of poverty and Lippi for honoring donors and sacred persons
Masaccio introduced rigorous centralized perspective
other books in my little desk stack:
this Mars and Venus Botticelli hangs at the National Gallery
and this was one of the “reimagined” scenes from the book - obsessed!!
I also learned that in a reference Library, the books are for use only on site and cannot be checked out and taken home. Based on the research you’re looking to do, they can then recommend other libraries for more specialized materials!
