I suspect that most of our profits will still come from pencils and rubbers for schoolkids".At the Lowry museum in Salford a spend of £2-£5 per child is not unusual, so he may be right. "But if you could sell the occasional beautiful high-quality live-steam models of a classic engine, for example, for £800, and contribute £300 to the museum, it would certainly help."Museums can get away with such added-on value for a good reason: the cachet of a museum gives instant brand-recognition of the sort that marketing men give eye teeth for. At the RA shop the captive market includes not so many anoraks but more black-ties, and quite conceivably the odd millionaire. The average disposable income per visitor may therefore be higher. Even so, most of its patrons would be hard-pressed to come away with a whole Caravaggio, or even his hat. But if you do want to take something home for the dressing-up box, do not despair: they also sell, for children, the "Make Your Own Caravaggio Hat Kit", complete with slot-together shapes, ostrich plumes and plastic jewels.Even expertly assembled I do not suppose it looks quite as good as the ready-made version But it comes at a much more reasonable £7.95.
You do not have to feel like a cheap-skate if you go for that option. There are always other museum shops you can visit with the £1,492.05 you have just saved. The Genius of Rome 1592-1623 is at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, until 16 April.. One of the finest medieval works of art ever found in Britain has been discovered by archaeologists, preserved in an air pocket 13 feet beneath the West Midlands city of Coventry. One of the finest medieval works of art ever found in Britain has been discovered by archaeologists, preserved in an air pocket 13 feet beneath the West Midlands city of Coventry. The masterpiece, part of a 14th-century mural of a genre derived from Giotto and the Italian Renaissance, is only the second painting discovered in England portraying one of the medieval world's most politically controversial subjects - the Apocalypse, featuring the end of the world and the Day of Judgment.The mural, based on a description of the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation, is believed by art historians to have formed a frieze, more than 50 yards long and 30 inches deep.
It ran around the inside of the chapter house of a Benedictine monastery and cathedral founded by Coventry's most famous daughter, Lady Godiva, which was demolished following the closure of the institution on the orders of Henry VIII's government in 1539.The only large surviving fragment found so far represents just a small part of the frieze, but is sufficient to reveal what the entire work would have looked like.Painted in red, pink, orange, silver, golden brown and black, the fragment, measuring 17in by 8in, shows one of Christ's disciples and three white-clad princes of the Church wearing crowns as they gaze upwards at the Day of Judgment towards a now-lost part of the mural, probably portraying Christ in Majesty. Indeed, above the princes is part of the wing of one of the four all-seeing heavenly creatures symbolically decorated with eyes, which were thought to guard Jesus on his throne.Behind the most important human figure - the disciple St John the Divine, the putative author of the Book of Revelation - is a pinkish-coloured turret with an open door representing the entrance to heaven.Although the mural was almost certainly painted by an English artist, it is strongly influenced by 14th-century Italian artistic tradition. The most likely date for the work is around the 1360s, says the University of London Courtauld Institute art historian, Miriam Gill.The fragment - found during work on a £25m Millennium Commission-backed urban regeneration programme in Coventry city centre - suggests that the quality of the mural was superior to that of the only other Apocalypse mural known from medieval Britain, that in Westminster Abbey, which dates from the 1380s.The Apocalypse was a controversial subject in 14th-century England. To left-wing Franciscan friars and proto-Protestant Wycliffite preachers, fed up with the corruption, power and wealth of Church and state, the punishment for mankind's wickedness was long overdue, the end of the world was nigh, and the final Day of Judgment was approaching.In contrast, mainstream and conservative clerics saw the Apocalypse in more practical terms - more as a template for the authority of the Church and its duty to judge and sentence wrongdoers following public confession. Located as it was, in the chapter house - the confession room - of a highly traditional religious institution, a Benedictine monastery, the Coventry mural would have reflected this second, more conservative treatment of the Apocalypse story.Indeed, just below the probable image of Christ sitting in judgment, in a now lost part of the frieze, would have sat the monastery's leader, the abbott or prior, who would have heard his monks publicly confess their sins to him.The archaeologists plan to continue their excavations in a garden owned by Coventry Cathedral.Art historians are amazed by the sheer beauty of the work. Its style is strongly influenced by Italian renaissance artists such as Lorenzietti of Siena.