Truth and Illusion in the National Gallery

• PHOTOS

The National Gallery houses one of the greatest collections of western painting in the world. Located in Trafalgar Square, in the centre of the West End, it is a must for any visit to London with a collection of over 2,000 works spanning some 650 years and containing masterpieces from each of the major periods.

We will begin in the Sainsbury Wing, environmentally controlled to protect the earliest paintings of the National Gallery, where we will look at key European works dating from between around 1250 and 1450 that illustrate the artists' and patrons' interest in verisimilitude the illusion, through the application of pigment on a flat surface, of a realistic space. In doing this we will investigate attempts to depict three-dimensional space convincingly specifically we will look at early investigations into perspective, perhaps focusing on Paolo Uccello's The Battle of San Romano; we will examine the depiction of light in Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait; and we will consider the

The National Gallery houses one of the greatest collections of western painting in the world. Located in Trafalgar Square, in the centre of the West End, it is a must for any visit to London with a collection of over 2,000 works spanning some 650 years and containing masterpieces from each of the major periods.

We will begin in the Sainsbury Wing, environmentally controlled to protect the earliest paintings of the National Gallery, where we will look at key European works dating from between around 1250 and 1450 that illustrate the artists' and patrons' interest in verisimilitude the illusion, through the application of pigment on a flat surface, of a realistic space. In doing this we will investigate attempts to depict three-dimensional space convincingly specifically we will look at early investigations into perspective, perhaps focusing on Paolo Uccello's The Battle of San Romano; we will examine the depiction of light in Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait; and we will consider the representation of the human figure in works such as Venus and Mars by Sonadro Botticelli. We will then use these three technical components of perspective, light and the human figure to continue our analysis of other works in the gallery.

On our journey we will of course stop to consider works by the High Renaissance artists: Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, specifically discussing their investigations into the human figure and analysing their use of perspective and light to achieve works of subtle psychological tension and complex but balanced compositions. We will then move on to discuss how the Baroque artists, for example Peter Paul Rubens and Caravaggio, use compositional devices, such as the structure of the space, the use of light and shade and the human figure itself to create scenes full of dramatic tension.

Depending on your interest, we can then explore other periods represented in the gallery and consider the stylistic and technical devices employed by artists in order to achieve specific aims, depending on period, fashion or the desires of the patron. We will finish in the late 1800s with works by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Vincent Van Gogh and, in light of the works we have already considered, we will examine how the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists challenged the traditional conventions of depicting three-dimensional space and discuss the radical new modes of seeing that resulted paving the way for the explosion of radical art movements that would proliferate in the 20th century.