Gold, The Queen's Gallery - exhibition review

This treasure chest of royal bling contains 50 golden works including jewellery, metalware and paintings
Lustre: golden items from the royal collection (Pics: Eva Zielinska-Millar/Royal Collection Trust/Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)
Ben Luke6 November 2014

The Queen’s Gallery’s exhibitions are often at their most fascinating when they draw from all parts of the royal family’s holdings, and so it is with this show. As you’d expect, its 50 works include golden jewellery, ceremonial baubles and fine furniture and metalware, but it also includes paintings using gold leaf or attempting to capture the precious metal’s lustre or a glistering, divine light.

Spanning 4,000 years, from a wonderfully simple Bronze Age cup to a 20th-century Fabergé cigarette case, it’s a mixed bag. Some of it’s gaudy but much else is beautiful. And an object’s history is often as intriguing as the thing itself — it’s a story of royal diplomacy as much as a showcase for the family bling.

The Fabergé cigarette case was a gift to Edward VII from the Dowager Tsarina of Russia in 1903, for instance, while a medallion with a fine but barely visible portrait of Elizabeth I, originally made in the court of James I, only found its way back into the royal collection when it was presented to the Queen by Sultan Qaboos Bin Said of Oman on a state visit in 1982.

Other works were acquired less peaceably: a golden tiger’s head from India, intended to be fearsome but actually rather cute, was taken from the broken up throne of Tipu Sultan following the siege of Seringapatam in 1799, and later presented to William IV.

There are some neat combinations of objects and paintings: Prince Albert’s badge of the Order of the Golden Fleece, encrusted with emeralds, sapphires and rubies, with the sheepskin emblem of the order rendered in yellow diamonds, is next to a 16th-century Flemish painting of the future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V wearing a much simpler golden badge, carefully rendered by the anonymous painter.

But if the objects are hit and miss — and a suitably immodest solid-gold tray created for George IV’s coronation is easily the show’s ugliest item — the show’s finest section is devoted to gold as a sacred material.

A Duccio triptych featuring the Crucifixion from around 1302 beautifully reflects the use of gold leaf to evoke divine light, radiating from all three panels, with exquisite detailing on the robes of the Virgin and St John, and a tiny glistering line on Christ’s loincloth.

This painting, as well as similarly exquisite French and Islamic manuscripts, prove that gold’s allure is not just about opulence and grandeur, but also about transcendence.

Until February 22 (020 7766 7301, royalcollection.org.uk)

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