Size Matters

On a whirlwind trip to the National Gallery recently I was reminded of a phenomenon that always used to interest me when I worked there as a Gallery Assistant. I went to look at Rooms 6, 7 and 8, which have been beautifully refurbished and hung since my last visit. These rooms house the Italian Renaissance paintings, notably an impressive collection by Raphael.

Among these is one of the gems of the National Gallery’s collection The Madonna of the Pinks. It features on the ‘highlights’ tour so is often the visitors’ main aim when they enter room 8. But, they barely ever spot the painting straight away, and often have to ask the Gallery Assistant where it is. This is because The Madonna of the Pinks is a tiny jewel of a painting, only 27.9 x 22.4 cm. It is dwarfed by most of the other paintings in the room. Yet, in the tiny pictures in the visitor guide it is the same size as every other highlight. Size makes a real different to people’s expectations of and reactions to the painting. Thrown by this Raphael’s size, many visitors almost recoil from it, which always saddens me, as it’s softness of expression and beautiful colouring make it rightly a highlight.

Similar questions arose recently in a seminar programme that I am co-convening this year at the Centre for Research in the Arts Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at Cambridge: ‘Things: Material Cultures of the long Eighteenth Century.’ In our first session, on 'Artefacts' we discussed the challenges posed by using objects and images as researchable sites of knowledge. One point which struck me was that a PowerPoint presentation, although vital when discussing objects, reduces (or enlarges) everything to the same size 2D square on the wall. This intrinsically affects our reaction to what we see. I don’t pretend to have a solution to this problem, but I’m becoming increasingly aware how much size matters.