National Gallery of Art - Part I

I say Part I because the collection here is massive so I was only able to take in a small part. I imagine a couple of sequels. This was just the West Building, which houses the collection through the 19th century with the contemporary collection next door. Truly monumental building seeded from a gift from Andrew Mellon.

The entry rotunda had a very colrful collection of potted flowers providing a nice contrast with the stately marble throughout. The building has massive ceilings hinting at how impressive the art you are about to view really is. I would say it worked. I skimmed the 13th - 15th century italianate religious panels and only slowed down when I hit the early renaissance. It is interesting to try to step back and see how the craft of painting evolved over the course of the next 200 years as very solid tempura colors were replaced by oil glazes allowing for suble variation in light. How subjects changed from solely religious to a mix of portraits sponsored by the wealthy and artisticly inspired peasant scenes. And how perspective evolved from placing distance higher in the portrait to representing distance through exact use of off canvas vanishing points.

There was one Da Vinci which was hard to judge by itself, several Rafaels which I did like, especially the relatively well known St George and the Dragon. A large collection of El Grecos, which I was pretty familiar with from seeing his work in Toledo and Madrid at a time when I was not very interested in visiting museums while abroad. I think I liked the post Renaissance Dutch painters the best, with the exception of Rembrandt. There was a large collection of Rembrandts but I don't really get the appeal. Of the other Dutch painters I liked Rubens, Vermeer and Cuyp. I think I enjoyed the peasant scenes and some of the very architecturally detailed city scapes (some good ones of Venice in this category) overall.

I got through most of the West wing of the main floor, starting in the northwest and wrapping around back to the Rotunda. Next time I will need to finish the Dutch and Flemish 17th century in the west wing then head to the East wing