In the morning we went to the 'Leonardo da Vinci, painter at the court of Milan' exhibition in the National Gallery. This exhibition shows 9 of the (only) 15 paintings which Leonardo produced in his lifetime, together with the drawings, sketches and studies he made in preparation for these paintings. It is a unique and hugely successful exhibition. We booked our tickets on 1November and they were sold out a few days later. They sell a certain number of tickets for a half hour 'slot', during which you can enter (you can then stay as long as you like). Unfortunately the number of tickets sold per slot is too large and thus there are still too many people there. For the paintings themselves that is not much of a problem, but as the drawings and sketches are mostly quite small, it is all but impossible to get close enough to see them properly. Still, it was very worthwhile to go, as the paintings are superb! The effects of the fall of the light (for instance) set Leonardo apart from many other artists.
After that, we met Sean at his office and went out for a pub lunch with him. We had not seen him for a month and we were pleased to see he is very well and nicely settled into his new life, with work, his house(share) and all.
In the afternoon we went on to the 'Museum of London' where they have an exhibition on the 'London of Dickens'. This year marks the 200th anniversary of Dickens' birth so there is a lot of Dickens around. Both Lyn and I are currently reading Dickens on the Kindle and the iPad and are enjoying it a lot.
Not a lot by way of pictures today, maybe I'll add one tomorrow.
As promised, here are 2 pictures:
Charles Dickens' writing desk (with part of a slideshow behind it)
Although the City of London corporation has won its High Court bid to have the 'Occupy' protestors removed, they have not disappeared from the courtyard outside St Paul's Cathedral yet (awaiting an appeal to the Human Rights Court). Actually by now it has degraded to a 'hippie camp'.
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