There is a wealth of iconic paintings on display at the NGA, making the show well worth visiting. These are the kinds of works of art that, in a pre-Covid world, people travelled to Europe to admire. Starting with the first room, which is devoted to the Italian Renaissance, Carlo Crivelli’s The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius (1486) and Tintoretto’s The Origin of the Milky Way (c.1575) stopped me in my tracks. Works by Domenico Ghirlandaio and Titian offer supreme examples of the development of perspectival painting and naturalism, and put us on a trajectory towards the Impressionist paintings presented in the exhibition’s final room. Incidentally, in both the first and final rooms there are pictures of dragons being slayed: Paolo Uccello’s Saint George and the Dragon (c.1470) and Ingres’s Angelica Saved by Ruggiero (1819–39). The history of Western art is, after all, as much about reoccurring tropes as it is about formalist progress.

Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers. 1888. © The National Gallery, London.

In the room featuring ‘Dutch Painting of the Golden Age’, Rembrandt’s Self-portrait at the Age of 34 (1640) draws the viewer into an intimate encounter with an artist known for his considered yet candid self-representations. Brushwork that gives texture to flesh, fabric, and fur, along with the artist’s skilled rendering of light and shadow, make this painting a showstopper. The room devoted to ‘Van Dyck and British Portraiture’ reminds us of the institutional underpinning of the exhibition – that this is the British National Collection, with representatives of the British School, including Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and Thomas Lawrence, recalling the motivations behind the establishment of the National Gallery in 1824. Following a side adventure with Canaletto on the Grand Tour, we progress to Spain and the work of Goya, Velázquez, El Greco, and Murillo. The landscapes of Claude Lorrain and those working within the picturesque tradition are displayed, before the exhibition concludes in France with the Impressionists. If the single work by Botticelli (Four Scenes from the Early Life of Saint Zenobius, c.1500) fails to inspire, the sole work by Van Gogh – Sunflowers of 1888 – is bound to attract attention, if only for its luminous yellow.

Beyond the display of iconic works of art, wall panels offer interactive activities for children. For adults, however, this exhibition does little to deepen our understanding of the art on display. There is a glossing over of the economic and political conditions under which the art was commissioned, made, sold, and collected. Slavery, war, and revolution go largely unmentioned. Images of women – from Ghirlandaio’s Madonna in the first room to Degas’s ballerinas in the final room – are plentiful, but not a single female artist is represented. Looking at the landscape room, you would be forgiven for forgetting that some of these pastoral scenes were produced against a backdrop of industrialisation.

One of the final paintings on show is a portrait of Mrs Robert Holland (1851) by Ary Scheffer. The Victorian female writer and philanthropist in Grecian drapery, as depicted by Scheffer, rests her cheek on her hand and angles her head pensively towards the exit of the exhibition. Beyond Botticelli to Van Gogh, visitors to the NGA will encounter a wall of portraits and self-portraits of Australian women as part of the exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now. It is as if Mrs Holland is wishing she were hanging in their company. Does the Know My Name exhibition exempt us from dealing with questions of exclusion in Botticelli to Van Gogh? In this precarious and stationary time, it is a treat – even a tonic – to be transported from Renaissance Italy to nineteenth-century France, via England and Spain, from the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra to the National Gallery in London. But let us not forget that there is more to the story of Botticelli to Van Gogh than meets the eye.

Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London is showing at the National Gallery of Australia until 14 June 2021.

This project is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.