New Electroacoustic Music inspired by Art Three of the Barber Institute’s best-loved paintings – as you’ve never heard them before! In this exciting sound installation, a collaboration with the University’s Department of Music, three postgraduate composers were commissioned to create new short electroacoustic pieces, inspired by works in the Barber collection. They chose three very different pictures … Read more
Florentine School Daphne Pursued by Apollo/The Metamorphosis of Daphne Florence, about 1440-50 Tempera on wood 47.4 x 53.1 cm Content warning – includes themes of sexual violence The mythological character Daphne flees from Apollo’s non-consensual pursual of her. Terrified, she turns into a tree to escape his clutches. These are the end panels of a … Read more
Unknown Venetian Artist The Madonna Enthroned with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Mary Magdalen Venice, late 14th century Tempera on wood 27.2 x 40 cm This is a fully intact, portable triptych (painting of three parts). Most early Italian paintings were divided to be sold more easily on the art market and now only … Read more
Attributed to Salerno di Coppo The Crucifixion Pistoia, Tuscany, 1280 Tempera on wood 50.8 x 27 cm Christ is crucified in front of his mother, the Virgin Mary, and his friend, John the Evangelist. Neither can look at his broken body. The angels above the crossbar share their grief. One of them covers their eyes … Read more
Studio of Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) The Virgin Mary, Infant Christ, and Saint John the Baptist Florence, about 1520 Oil on wood 55.3 x 39 cm Christ stands on his mother’s lap, with his cousin John smiling eagerly behind. John points towards Jesus, signalling his importance. Christ reaches out towards us, and Mary gently restrains … Read more
Portraiture Highly original and arresting angles on the theme of portraiture feature in this display of work by emerging photographic talent from Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, Birmingham City University. In the fourth of an annual selective award collaboration, students were challenged to produce their own responses to the theme that has been central … Read more
Early Acquisitions of Drawings for the Barber Collection The first works acquired for the Barber in July 1936 were drawings, their subtlety appealing to the Barber’s First Director, Thomas Bodkin, who wrote: ‘Drawings evoke rather than compel emotion; they whisper rather than call to the spectator’. Those early purchases comprised important examples by Fra Bartolommeo, … Read more
Jean-François de Troy Jason Taming the Bulls of Aeetes Rome, about 1742 Oil on canvas 55.3 x 128.9 cm Jason, in the centre, miraculously tames two fire-breathing bulls in his quest for the Golden Fleece. He is watched in amazement to the left by Aeetes, the King of Colchis, and by his daughter Medea. She … Read more
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec A Woman Seated in a Garden Paris, about 1890 Essence on cardboard 49.4 x 31.3 cm Toulouse-Lautrec painted many studies of women posed in a garden setting in the years around 1890. The studies were made in a public park close to his studio in Montmartre and they included friends and paid … Read more
Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto Portrait of a Young Man Venice, 1554 Oil on canvas 121 x 93.3 cm At the top right corner of this portrait an inscription reads (in Latin), ‘in the year 1554 in the month of May [or March], in the 22nd year of his age’. The actual identity of the young … Read more
Tiberio of Assisi Saint Francis of Assisi Bastia, near Assisi, early 16th century Fresco, transferred to canvas in the 19th century 153 x 70 cm Saint Francis (about 1181-1226) is shown in the habit of the religious order he formed, the Friars Minor. He displays the stigmata, the scars corresponding to the five wounds of … Read more
Tiberio of Assisi Saint Clare of Assisi Bastia, near Assisi, the early 16th century Fresco, transferred to canvas in the 19th century 153 x 70 cm Saint Clare (about 1194-1253) was a follower of Saint Francis and the founder of the Order of Poor Clares. Here she is shown as a young woman holding a … Read more
Tiberio of Assisi Saint Ansanus Bastia, near Assisi, the early 16th century Fresco, transferred to canvas in the 19th century 153 x 70 cm Ansanus (died 303) was a Sienese nobleman martyred by the Emperor Diocletian for converting to Christianity. He was the city’s earliest patron saint. He is shown holding his trachea, lungs, heart … Read more
20th-Century Portrait Drawings From formal commissions to intimate sketches of friends and lovers, Defining Faces focuses on portraiture in a century that witnessed radical changes in artistic style. The exhibition – the second in a prestigious collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, London – examines the function of, and the variety of approaches to the … Read more