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Hello my name is Petya Kukularova and I’ll be taking you on a tour of one of London’s
best-kept secrets: Frederick Leighton’s House Museum. If you’ve never heard of Leighton,
you are in for a treat. This year the Leighton House Museum received
the prestigious European Union Cultural Heritage/ Europa Nostra award for the results of the
restoration work which had the museum closed for two years. Today, however, we can a take
tour of Leighton’s opulent home and enjoy the beautiful remnants of an age gone-by.
Frederick Leighton was born in 1830 in a wealthy English family whose fortune derived from
Imperial Russia. Leighton’s grandfather was chief physician for the navy and an obstetrician
for the Russian Queen. In this capacity he assisted during the birth of the Bulgarian
king-liberator Alexander II. Although Leighton was president of the Royal Academy and had
an extremely successful artistic career, throughout his life he relied on the fortune his family
amassed during their stay in Russia. Apart from money, Leighton also inherited from his
family the penchant for travel. As a result, today the Museum boasts an impressive collection
of Renaissance paintings, Middle Eastern ceramics, furniture and rugs as well as some of Leighton’s
own paintings. I am in front of one of my favourite paintings
Leighton executed. At the time, he was only twenty-two. His family were living in Frankfurt
and he was studying at the local Academy. The represented scene is The Death of Brunelleschi.
Filippo Brunelleschi was a key architect in the Italian Renaissance and our primary source
for his life is Georgio Vasari. According to Vasari, Brunelleschi’s closest people
were Donatello and Masaccio and we can see them standing over Brunelleschi – this is
Donatello and next to him – Masaccio. In many ways, however, this is a very idealised
depiction of a person’s last hour. Filippo looks very calm, having just received his
last communion, and is surrounded by his close friends. Also, the scene takes place in Brunelleschi’s
studio which we know thanks to the plaster casts in the upper right-hand side corner
of the painting. What we don’t know is who is the represented
girl. Some historians claim that this is Brunelleschi’s daughter but Vasari insists the architect
never got married or had children. In my opinion, however, the girl serves a dual purpose. On
one hand she is there purely for decoration: a pretty girl who is holding flowers. On the
other hand she is there to reassure us that even in the face of death, there is something
beautiful to comfort us.