The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: The Renaissance
Until October 26 2008; The Queen’s Gallery, Edinburgh

Imagine a box of luxurious chocolates, every one of which you want to eat first. Now imagine the Queen’s Gallery in Edinburgh, its deep blue walls lined with dozens of gold-framed masterpieces of Italian Renaissance art. The effect is dazzling, and it probably won’t strike you till far into the show that some of the biggest names are actually missing.

This is one half of an exhibition shown last year at Buckingham Palace, of Renaissance and Baroque art from the Royal Collection. To squeeze the show into the Edinburgh gallery, the Baroque section has been saved till later, and some larger paintings (such as two magnificent Tintorettos) have been dropped entirely.

The show starts with a portrait of a young man. Experts don’t know for sure whether it’s a picture of Raphael, or by Raphael, or either. It’s labelled as neither. After that, it’s not until the drawing section in the back room that you’ll find the Renaissance’s three star players, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael.

Michelangelo’s The Fall of Phaeton is a spectacular Rubik’s cube of compositional tightness, the chalk worked so closely that it’s hard to believe the artist was a mere human. Leonardo’s study for a drawing of Neptune is a flamboyant mass of whirls, but it’s disappointing to see only one from an album of 600 drawings by the master.

It’s not all the fault of the curators; Oliver Cromwell is largely to blame. Charles I had amassed an impressive collection of Renaissance art – his Cabinet Room alone contained Raphael’s St George And The Dragon and Leonardo’s St John The Baptist. But having separated the king’s head from his body, Cromwell set about liberating his 1570 paintings. The Raphael is now in Washington, and the Leonardo in the Louvre. Charles II, who attempted to rebuild the Royal Collection, admitted to a visitor that the Cabinet Room was “not half of what his father had owned”.

Charles I’s private chambers boasted a strong display of Titians, but again these were lost to the highest bidders. The four paintings in the show attributed to Titian are easily out-classed by five which hang permanently on the walls of the National Gallery of Scotland. The king’s fondness for Venetian art does tip the balance of the show towards the sweet-coloured, soft-focus harmonies of that school.

Whether it’s Cromwell’s fault, or the spatial limitations of the Queen’s Gallery, this exhibition is nothing like a comprehensive survey of the Italian Renaissance. But it remains an alluring chocolate box of delightful surprises, like Andrea del Sarto’s seductive Woman In Yellow, the marks of the painter’s fingers still visible in the unfinished surface.

Other gems include Lorenzo Lotto’s startling Bearded Man, his bold frontal pose balanced against a subtlety of touch, and the same painter’s portrait of Andrea Odoni, rightly celebrated as his best. The exhibition’s poster girl, Agnolo Bronzino’s Lady In Green, directs her unflinching gaze at you, daring you to be distracted by Giulio Romano’s portrait of the fanciest dress you ever laid eyes on, with Margherita Paleologo peeping out the top.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 04.05.08