Evans is a place on Earth: Imitation of Christ:Hockney and Piero at the National Gallery.

Each time I visit The National Gallery, usually for a temporary exhibition, I make a point of visiting some of the permanent collection and trying to broaden my art knowledge and this afternoon was no exception. In fact, I was so inspired by David Hockney's love and admiration for the Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca that I ended up taking a deep dive into the works of fellow Renaissance artists.

David Hockney - My Parents (1977)

Raphael, Titian, Mantegna, Palma Vecchio, Masaccio, El Greco. I could hardly get enough (though I did - Renaissance complacence is a very real thing as I discovered on a Tuscan holiday twenty years ago) but it's not those 'old masters' I'm hear to talk about now. It's David Hockney, Piero della Francesca and the National Gallery itself. Which is currently hosting the free Hockney and Piero:A Longer Look exhibition. There were pretty long queues to get in to the gallery but this room was not too crowded so I did, indeed, enjoy 'a longer look'.

The National is celebrating its 200th birthday this year and since it opened it has always worked with living artists, many of whom have sketched, taught, or exhibited within the collection. Living painters were consulted regarding new gallery acquisitions and access has been granted to artists to inspire their own creativity. In fact, until the 1940s the gallery was shut for two days week (except for paying customers - there's always the bottom line to consider) so that artists could enjoy a private view.

Since then, contemporary artists of their time have been involved in curating exhibitions and making works for special displays although this little show is something quite different. The newest works in it are, of course, the pair of Hockney paintings and they are already forty-seven years old. It's also a rare case of the more modern painter, Hockney, being a bigger draw at the moment than Piero. At least in London. The story, of course, may be quite different in Florence.

Hockney is on record as saying he's had a life long admiration of Piero della Francesca and to look at his paintings here that would be hard to deny. Piero's Baptism of Christ features in reflection in Hockney's painting of his parents, Laura and Kenneth, along with a book about the 18c French painter Chardin and a drape by fellow Tuscan Renaissance bigwig Fra Angelico. The Baptism of Christ appears again in Looking at Pictures on a Screen. This time along with works by Van Gogh, Vermeer, and Degas.

David Hockney - Looking at Pictures on a Screen (1977)

That's the art critic, curator, and one of Hockney's close personal friends Henry Geldzaher admiring, intensely, various artworks and reproductions of artworks and, as with Hockney's parents, he's been captured in a very Hockneyesque way. Colourful, elegant, realistic looking yet not looking real - certainly not anywhere near as 'real' as the work of hyperreal artists like Chuck Close or Ron Mueck, and dignified.

Hockney, it seems to me, always give his subjects dignity. Him and The National Gallery go back a bit too. From visiting the gallery and sketching works as a younger man, to guest curating 1981's Looking at Pictures on a Screen exhibition (named for the work above) and being one of twenty-four artists (others included Paula Rego, Cy Twombly, Patrick Caulfield, Frank Auerbach, Louise Bourgeois, Lucian Freud, Anselm Kiefer, Jasper Johns, and Bill Viola) to contribute to the millennium celebrating Encounters show. He chose to paint images of some of the gallery's then stewards.

A nice touch. The three paintings are all hung neatly on one wall and the rest of this one room show is fleshed out with letters between Hockney and the gallery's former director Michael Levey (in which Hockney enquires as to the possibility of copying a Van Gogh painting) and a catalogue of a Hockney curated show (which features Piero, Degas, Vermeer, and Van Gogh - the big names again - on its cover) but the centrepiece is, of course, a painting made nearly six hundred years ago.

Which is just how you'd imagine David Hockney would want it. He'd probably insist on it. Purchased by the National in 1861, The Baptism of Christ has remained on display ever since. Even though Piero was not popular with Victorian audiences who preferred the supposedly 'sweeter' style of Raphael. That's changed now and Piero della Francesca is widely considered one of the most important painters of his era. A fact that was not lost on my old Eggheads frenemy Kevin Ashman who I bumped into in Winchester back in 2018 during a TADS walk.

He was sat on a bench near the side of the Itchen reading a hefty looking tome about Piero (of course)! Abstract and modernist artists saw something in Piero's work and though I can't quite work out what that is or was, it's indisputable that it's a work of rare talent. In it we see Christ being baptised by John the Baptist (who knows the score) near the banks of the river Jordan. Above Christ's head, a dove represents the Holy Spirit and to JC's side there stands a somewhat anaemic looking walnut tree.

Cleverer people than me claim that the whiteness of that tree as well as the whiteness of Christ's skin (surprisingly pale for a man who was born in modern day Palestine) and probably his loin cloth too divide the painting up according to the much sought after golden ratio. There's some angels in it too. Angels are always good.

While I'm not a believer in supernatural and all seeing deities. I do enjoy a lot of nominally spiritual and religious things. I love church architecture (mosques too), I love gospel music, and I love these old religious paintings. Unlike the people who created these things, or most of them, I don't ascribe their creation to a god or a team of gods but to humanity. Although religion in a way is the worst thing that humans ever invented it has to be said it shows how remarkable and complex we are as a species that we have been able to construct these incredible stories and narratives and then build buildings, write books, write songs, and create paintings to celebrate them. With that I went for my gallery walkabout. I had a longer look.