An immersive experience at the National Gallery where visitors could journey through an interactive high-resolution image of a picture with sound, poetry and light in socially distanced pods has now been reimagined as an online experience, the first of its kind for the Gallery.
Sensing the Unseen: Step into Gossaert’s Adoration, mobile edition is a digital experience inspired by the ‘sonified painting’ which lies at the heart of the Gallery exhibition of the same name. It was forced to close by lockdown just a week after opening on 9 December 2021. This will be the first Gallery exhibition aimed at mobile phone users, allowing more people to enjoy the exhibition wherever they are.
It goes live from Friday 2 April on https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/visiting/virtual-tours
The online exhibition builds on the Gallery’s hugely popular digital offer of bringing the nation’s art to the nation’s homes which has been in place since the beginning of the pandemic and during lockdown periods.
In the mobile experience, six poems in the voice of King Balthasar, a character in The Adoration of the Kings, 1510-15, will interpret six scenes from the painting while interactive sound brings them to life guiding people to visual details they may have missed and immersing them in the world of Jan Gossaert’s masterpiece.
Users will journey through the scenes from the painting, starting with the broken pavement in a scene titled ‘Rupture’ and ending with the angels’ celestial bodies of ‘The Star’, using touch to zoom into visual details and see the astonishing skill of Gossaert’s artistic work. They can also share their favourite visual details from the painting on Instagram.
ABOUT THE PAINTING:
Jan Gossaert (Jean Gossart)
active 1508; died 1532
The Adoration of the Kings, 1510-15
Oil on oak, 179.8 × 163.2 cm
This large altarpiece is crammed with onlookers, animals, angels and richly dressed kings and courtiers, come to worship the infant Christ, who sits on his mother’s lap in a palatial but ruined building.
Jan Gossaert has signed the painting on the hat of Balthasar, the king on the left, and on the silver collar of his attendant. Technical analysis has revealed the skill which the artist put into this picture. There is a considerable amount of underdrawing and Gossaert has made a great many changes at all stages. There are virtuoso passages of detail, especially in the foreground: the hairs sprouting from Caspar’s cheek and the decoration of his hat; the fringes of Balthasar’s stole.
By 1600 this painting was perhaps in the abbey of St Adrian at Geraardsbergen (Graamont) in East Flanders. Gossaert seems to have painted it for the church between about 1510 and 1515, probably for the funerary chapel of Daniel van Boechout, lord of Boelare near Geraardsbergen.
| Duration | 02 April 2021 - 01 September 2021 |
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| Venue | National Gallery |
| Address | Trafalgar Square, London, WC2N 5DN |
| Contact | 2077472885 / information@ng-london.org.uk / www.nationalgallery.org.uk |