Fool's Errand: Robin Hobb

(published by Harper Voyager, £11.99, or from Amazon)

The Tawny Man Trilogy: Book I 

We must save the world, you and I.  Again... In the rutted path of fate, you were a rock, my dear Fitz. And you have shifted the grinding wheel out of its trough and into a new track. Now, of course, we must see that it remains there. That may be the most difficult part of all.

Following on from my rereads of the previous two Robin Hobb trilogies, I'm now on to The Tawny Man: the third (and, for me, the last). After the wider scope of The Liveship Traders trilogy, with its large cast of characters, Fool's Errand feels tighter, more focused and more intimate. Even on a second reading, I was gripped: this easily measures up to the best of The Farseer trilogy. It's necessary to have read The Farseer before moving on to The Tawny Man, because this book is so heavily dependent on the events of the earlier books that it probably won't make any sense otherwise. It's also important to have grown to know the characters through the earlier books, because so much of Fool's Errand turns on the deep friendship between Fitz, Nighteyes and the Fool. You probably don't have to have read The Liveship Traders trilogy as well, but there are a couple of neat references whose significance would be lost otherwise, such as the Fool's characteristically irreverent decision to call his horse Malta, and Fitz's unintentional visit to Others' Island. It was an absolute joy to return to the Six Duchies again, not just because I was rejoining some of my most beloved characters in fiction, but also due to the quality of the writing. Fitz has a very distinctive narrative voice - aggressive, contemplative and poetic by turns - and I'm glad to have him back.

Fifteen years have passed since the events of The Farseer trilogy and Fitz has made a modest new life for himself, under the name of Tom Badgerlock, in an isolated cottage far away from the politics and dangers of Buckkeep. He lives simply, with his adopted son, the foundling Hap, and his ageing wolf Nighteyes, but one summer brings a succession of unexpected visitors to his door. First comes Chade, the man who once trained him in the assassin's art, who now serves as Counsellor to Queen Kettricken and her son Prince Dutiful. Fitz knows that there is no such thing as a simple visit from Chade: 'He was not just one old man come to visit me. He brought all of my past trailing along behind him as an embroidered train follows a woman into a hall. When I let him into my door, I had let in my old world with him.' Chade invites Fitz back to Buckkeep, to resume life at court as Skillmaster to Dutiful (who is more closely related to Fitz than Chade suspects), but Fitz refuses. And yet he is less able to resist the appeal of another, far more welcome visitor who appears on his doorstep one day: the Fool, no longer the colourless boy Fitz remembers but a dazzling young man in shades of tawny and gold. Fate, it seems, is ready to catch them both up on its wheel once again. Neither Fitz nor the Fool can return openly, of course (though they have both changed so much that no one is likely to recognise them). Instead, Fitz finds himself dragged into an elaborate charade, under his name Badgerlock, as the bodyguard and valet of the Fool's new persona, the spoiled, flamboyant Jamaillian nobleman called Lord Golden. There is little time for Fitz to settle in, because he returns to Buckkeep to find that Prince Dutiful has vanished, barely a fortnight before his betrothal ceremonies. Suddenly his dreams begin to take on more significance: he has dreamed of a boy, hunting at night with a Wit-bonded cat; but who is the woman whose alluring voice beckons Dutiful on in these dreams? Fitz begins to realise that Dutiful has inherited more than the Farseer looks and, in a world where the Witted are loathed and sometimes even lynched, that presents a very real threat to the future of the Farseer throne. 

Fitz's world is rarely a light-hearted one and this book has more than its fair share of physical and emotional struggle, as he resumes the task of secretly defending his family, despite the toll it takes on him ('Pain. That's what being a Farseer means to me. Pain and being used.'). Moreover, he now has to face one particularly difficult parting - I'd forgotten exactly how this happened and so it caught me unawares: beautifully-written, perfectly judged and very moving. I can't deny there was a bit of a tear in my eye. Oh; and, just in case you thought that Fitz might have grown wiser with age, be assured that nothing of the kind has happened. He's still proud, defensive and bitterly lonely, tormented by memories of the life that he almost had with Molly, and tortured by his craving for the Skill, which invites him to just step into it and be swept away. He remains deeply loyal to those he loves, chief among whom are Nighteyes and the Fool, and his conversations with these two sparkle with affection and wry humour: some of my favourite bits of the book were idle bits of banter which just fitted beautifully with the relationships between the characters. (I especially like the interaction between Fitz and the Fool's alter ego, Lord Golden, whom I can't help but feel is Hobb's tongue-in-cheek homage to Sir Percy Blakeney.) The difficulty, however, is that Fitz's emotional intelligence hasn't really improved over the years either and he remains gloriously resistant to hints of any kind. He cherishes his close friendship with the Fool because it's one of the few links to his boyhood that he has left, and it's the kind of relationship where they can both occasionally throw in the word 'love' without Fitz having to confront the issue of what that actually means. He just takes it for granted without analysing it at all; and, although that works for now, it's going to cause him problems later on. For it rapidly becomes clear that this trilogy has a romantic thread running through it, albeit a romance in which one of the participants is (for now, anyway) completely oblivious.

It's been an unusual experience, returning to this particular trilogy. When I first read it I was in my late teens, with all that implies about being overly romantic, intense and fond of a good bit of angst. I mentioned on another occasion that it can sometimes feel as though you didn't read a book early enough; but in this case, the timing was ideal. Even though the characters are considerably older than they were in The Farseer, that doesn't mean that they (i.e. Fitz) necessarily have any clearer insight into their emotions or any better way to deal with what they do feel; and that sense of confusion chimed with my adolescent soul. Reading it again now conjures up all the old feelings. Every time I picked it up I felt myself plunged back into a kind of emotional maelstrom, which left me feeling febrile and light-headed, quite unlike the grown woman I purport to be. I rather liked it.

Here are some of the various covers. A gold star goes to John Howe for the cover of my edition (shown at the beginning of this post), who gets Fitz absolutely spot-on. And the wooden spoon goes to the German edition, where we see a phenomenon which Heloise explained with reference to the covers for Lady of the Forest. Rather than commission a new cover, the publishers have simply reused the artwork from Tad Williams's The Dragonbone Chair which, beyond the fact that someone probably does carry someone else in the course of the book, is nevertheless almost completely irrelevant to Hobb's novel. But they hope that by putting Robin Hobb's name on it, we won't notice...

The original US cover  |  The new UK edition  |  The Spanish edition  |  The Dutch edition  |  The German edition

Robin Hobb's novels:

The Farseer Trilogy

Book I: Assassin's Apprentice

Book II: Royal Assassin

Book III: Assassin's Quest

The Liveship Traders

Book I: Ship of Magic

Book II: The Mad Ship

Book III: Ship of Destiny

The Tawny Man

Book I: Fool's Errand

Book II: The Golden Fool

Book III: Fool's Fate

Peter and Alice

(Noël Coward Theatre, London, until 1 June 2013)

One of four plays in the Michael Grandage Season at the Noël Coward Theatre, Peter and Alice was already virtually sold out in January when I booked my ticket. Last Tuesday night, despite my advance planning, I found myself in my customary spot up in the back of the balcony, opera glasses at the ready. I hadn't read any reviews of the play (I try not to, until after I've made up my own mind about things) and I'd been really looking forward to it. Part of the appeal was the chance to see Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw on stage. Moreover, this is a new play which has been written by John Logan, who was the screenwriter on Skyfall and did such a good job in breathing new life into the James Bond franchise. Then there was the play's concept itself - a conversation between the two people who inspired, respectively, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. I was expecting it to be excellent. Sadly it wasn't; but it failed to be excellent in rather interesting ways.

It's 1932 and a reception is underway to mark the centenary of Reverend Charles Dodgson's birth. The guest of honour at the party is the elderly Alice Liddell Hargreaves (Judi Dench), who is waiting in a side room for her cue to enter and embark on her usual speech about the enduring magic of Alice in Wonderland, which she inadvertently inspired as a ten-year-old muse on golden summer afternoons in Oxford. As she waits, she finds herself accosted by a rather awkward young man (Ben Whishaw), who begins to ask uncomfortably searching questions. What exactly does she feel about having her childhood appropriated for public consumption in this way? Does she feel that people are disappointed when they meet the real Alice Liddell? How does she feel about Reverend Dodgson himself? It becomes clear that the young man's questions have a point. He is Peter Llewellyn Davies, one of five brothers befriended by J.M. Barrie, and the boy whose name was adopted for Barrie's most enduring creation: Peter Pan. At first Alice is amused at the thought of them meeting like this, both so very different from their fictional alter egos. She tries to present the public-friendly face that she has grown accustomed to over the last sixty years, pointing out that 'their' stories have brought joy to generations of children. But Peter refuses to accept such a glib, polished response. Together, they find themselves exploring the darker side of what it means to be a child-muse, and wondering about what drove Dodgson and Barrie to form the close friendships with children that led to their classic stories.

There is darkness here - not in the shape of physical abuse, but in the form of emotional exploitation - and Logan treads a very delicate line with great care. He looks at these intense relationships from a child's point of view: flattered by the attention, proud that one's siblings weren't favoured so much, but ultimately dogged by an uneasy sense that something wasn't quite right. Both Peter and Alice confess that they felt something else was expected of them by their adult friends but they were never quite able, as children, to understand what that was; and so they knew only that, somehow, they had failed. Both Dodgson and Barrie come across as initially well-meaning: drawn to the children because they were little more than overgrown boys themselves, and found adult society (let alone adult women) difficult to deal with. Their clumsiness among other adults, however, disappeared when they were with children, transmuted into story-telling sessions, fantastical adventures and make-believe. But Logan allows us to see how an innocent friendship can swiftly become tainted. He points out that Dodgson's friendship with ten-year-old Alice took place at a time when the age of consent and marriage was twelve. In the play, the later stages of their friendship are shadowed by Dodgson's confused attempts to find a way in which he can prevent the Alice he loves from growing up and leaving him - whether that's through photographing her, or inching towards the idea of marrying her. Despite all this, Dodgson comes across as a rather naive, bumbling character; whereas Barrie seems much more sinister (Finding Neverland this is not). Lodge implies that Barrie made himself indispensable to Arthur Davies as he was dying, in the hope of being made guardian to his five boys after his death. When that happened, he exploited his power over the boys to try to keep them reliant on him - making them feel guilty, even as young men, about making lives for themselves outside their relationship with him; and, in short, trying to prevent them from growing up. I don't know enough of the history to be able to judge how accurate this is, but it's a rather chilling angle on the stories.

One of the key questions in the play was: when do we grow up? Is it when society proclaims us an adult and allows us certain privileges - the first corset; the first ball; the parties, the husband, the children? Or is it when we have to face up to the reality that life is not forever? Is 'growing up' about dealing with grief; death; the bitterness of loneliness? It soon becomes clear that the latter is a more accurate guide. Alice, for all her parties and her marriage, is little more than a child playing at the ideal of adulthood. Perhaps she doesn't really leave childhood behind until the golden days are tempered with a bitter gall: a husband's affairs with the servants; or, more terrible still, the Great War. This is something which looms large over both characters. After all, the only boys who really never grow up are those who die. Childhood recollections of playing Indians and pirates become merged with the smell of gas and the horrors of life in the trenches. The mermaid's pool in Neverland blends into the quiet lake in which Peter's brother Michael finally finds a way to escape from Barrie. Despite longing to be freed from their fictional alter egos, both Alice and Peter find themselves coming back to the stories as touchstones.

Alice (Judi Dench) and Peter (Ben Whishaw)  |  The fantastical set at its full extent

As you can see, Logan demands a lot of thinking in the course of the play's 90-minute duration (it's only one act and there's no interval). I thought he handled the issues sensitively and honestly, but there was something about the performance that didn't quite gel. Alice and Peter are the main characters, but Logan brings on two further pairs of characters as we go deeper into their memories. Dodgson (Nicholas Farrell) and Barrie (Derek Riddell) appear on stage to relive key moments of their relationships with the children, acting against Peter and Alice in their adult forms. A little later, Peter Pan (Olly Alexander) and Alice in Wonderland (Ruby Bentall) also join the action. I couldn't decide whether they were meant to represent a generic childhood sense of wonder, magic and imagination, or whether they specifically represented the children who were still lost deep within Peter and Alice. Either way, by the end of the play there were six people on stage (and sometimes seven, if you count Stefano Braschi, who gamely played Arthur Davies, Reggie Hargreaves and Michael Llewellyn Davies, as and when they were required). I wonder, honestly, how many people there needed to be. The addition of the fictional characters was the thing that really didn't work for me. I can see why it was an appealing idea, but both of them (and Peter Pan in particular) added a slightly absurd note that jarred with the rest of the play. It risked trivialising Logan's thoughtful exploration of the authors' relationships with the children who inspired them. And I thought it was very ironic that both of these characters were played by adult actors.

Lest you think I'm being too critical, I should add that the sets were beautiful, starting off in the shabby back room of a bookshop, which opens out into a fantastical series of sets with chessboard floors, in which Peter and Alice play out their memories. As for the actors: Judi Dench has reached the stage where to play anything other than Judi Dench would disappoint her audience - she could have come on and simply read a shopping list and we would all have adored her. She gives Alice a spiky, self-defensive frailty which is very endearing, but she is now so famous that it becomes more and more difficult to look beyond the actor to the character. Ben Whishaw's Peter was very hunched and self-contained and awkward - and, if that was entirely acting, then he did extremely well; but I couldn't shake off the feeling that some of it was his own nervousness coming through. It shouldn't have been - this guy kicked off his career with a West End run of Hamlet, after all - but he never quite seemed to comfortably inhabit the role (unlike his performances in Skyfall or Perfume, for example). A note of praise should also go to the programme, which includes a couple of unexpectedly absorbing mini-essays: one about the enduring appeal of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, and the other about changing ways of representing the stories through illustration.

Overall, however, Peter and Alice is a new play and it unfortunately felt like a new play: one which hasn't had its wrinkles smoothed out yet and which still occasionally feels disjointed. Even though I knew it was going to be short, the ending still caught me unawares (and I'm about to tell you what it is, so beware if you don't want spoilers). Alice and Peter simply leave the stage one by one, as their fictional alter egos tell the audience how each of them would die. The final line was, if I remember correctly, "A few years after that, Peter Llewellyn Davies went down into Sloane Square station and threw himself in front of a train." (Lights go down. Slightly awkward moment before the applause begins, as the audience members mentally calculate whether they have to go via Sloane Square on their way home). 

As I left the theatre I felt strangely uneasy - and not just because I had to go via Sloane Square. The play never quite decided what it wanted to be, wavering between nostalgia and tragedy; and, although I'm all for breaking out of the usual genres, I simply don't think that it worked here. It's a shame, because the concept was wonderful - it's just that the execution never quite lived up to the idea.

Ship of Destiny: Robin Hobb

(published by Harper Voyager, £8.99, or from Amazon)

The Liveship Traders Trilogy: Book III

We are on the cusp. We are a coin spinning in the toss, a card fluttering in the flip, a rune chip floating in stirred water. Possibilities swarm like bees. In this date, in this moment, in a breath, the future of the world will shift course by a notch. One way or another, the coin will land ringing, the card will settle to the table, the chip will bob to the surface. The face that shows uppermost will set our days, and children to come will say, "That is just the way it has always been."

In this final instalment in The Liveship Traders trilogy, we rejoin the people of Bingtown and the Rain Wilds in the aftermath of the hatching of the dragon Tintaglia, whose existence calls for a complete change of attitude. That change is required not just in the minds of the Rain Wild Traders, who will become so intrinsically linked to her iron will, but more generally in the minds of those waging war, who come to realise that, no matter how powerful they are in human terms, there are some forces they can never overcome. Directly or indirectly, Tintaglia's emergence affects all the plot lines which have been unfurling so intricately during the last two books. In return for the assistance she demands in safeguarding the final journey of the serpents up the Rain Wild River, she makes a dramatic intervention in the Chalcedean siege of Bingtown, and condescends to help Reyn search for his beloved Malta, who has been unhappily stranded with the petulant Satrap of Jamaillia. Selden, the youngest of the Vestrit children, finds his role as the spokesman and defender for Tintaglia, as her emergence brings him visions and memories from the days of the Elderlings. And, spread across the seas of Jamaillia, serpents and liveships find themselves increasingly troubled by the insistent nudge of old memories, buried deep within, forcing them to confront their pasts and futures, and to see what they really are. Wintrow finally fulfils his purpose, not as a priest or pirate, but as a liberator; and Kennit's ambitions take a darker, crueller turn as the dragon-self within Vivacia bolsters his sense of his own power. With Brashen and Althea at his helm, the emotionally-divided Paragon struggles to embrace the totality of his being - and Amber, witnessing the transformation of the world, watches and marvels as destiny becomes reality.

Can I talk about Amber now? Obviously, this is going to involve spoilers, so please be careful; you have been warned! I remember, when I read the books for the first time, I didn't pick up on all the clues about Amber and it wasn't until I read a certain scene in The Tawny Man trilogy that I realised what had been going on, and came back looking for the hints. Most were very subtle, although towards the end of The Mad Ship we had a teasingly direct clue, when Lavoy sneers at Amber for being a fool, and she admits, 'It's not the first time I've been called a fool, and likely not the last'. Here in Ship of Destiny, as Paragon lies in flames and Amber desperately plunges into his mind in an effort to save herself and the crew, one of his dragon-selves taunts her, calling her 'little fool'; and, at another point, Paragon attempts to reassure her: 'You are only one small, short-lived creature. You'd have to be a fool to think you could change the course of the whole world'. Amber's reply? 'Oh, Paragon, in that you are more right than you know, my friend.' For Amber, as you probably realised long before I did, is just another persona adopted by the person we came to know in The Farseer as the Fool. Ever drawn by moments of change and, most especially, by the prospect of dragons returning to the world, Amber has again endeavoured to be at the heart of the storm. And yet, even though the Six Duchies is a long way north (and few people would recognise Amber's honey-coloured skin and hair), she hasn't simply deserted one life for another. On the contrary, we begin to see here the true depth of the Fool's connection with Fitz. Amber's renovation of Paragon's figurehead in Fitz's image - given away by the elaborate earring and the motif of the charging bucks - is a flamboyant assertion of affection, which is both public and, in her refusal to give details of Fitz's name, strangely private. (I laughed aloud when Brashen asked 'Are you going to fix his nose?' only to be rebuffed with the full force of Amber's indignation.) There's also an odd moment when Amber and Paragon are discussing Wintrow, and whether his destiny turned out as planned - whether he was actually meant to be a scholar rather than a king - and Paragon, trying to be comforting, points out that 'It is probably no more significant than if a man who was meant to be a king became a philosophical recluse instead'. Amber's reaction puzzled me at first, and then I remembered that of course Fitz was technically the heir to the throne, and yet has ended up in some tiny cottage somewhere, struggling to write a history of the Six Duchies. Perhaps Amber feels that in both cases she is somehow responsible for not allowing destiny to follow the right path. And, as I paid more attention to her character this time round, I was struck by the sudden thought that actually - if you consider The Farseer, The Liveship Traders and The Tawny Man as three parts of the same story - the Fool/Amber becomes the focus. Maybe I've misunderstood the books before. Maybe this isn't Fitz's story, or Althea's story, or the Rain Wilds' story - this is the story of the one character who can move between these worlds and who is ready to nudge others into the right paths to make sure that things happen as they should. And that puts a rather different perspective on things.

When writing about The Mad Ship I mentioned that the feel of The Liveship Traders is very different from The Farseer, and magic becomes even more central to the final book in the trilogy. With Tintaglia's emergence the story moves very firmly into the realm of high fantasy, even though its mercantile, early-modern setting is refreshingly different from the usual. Certain things, such as Selden's miraculous transformation into a golden-tongued Elderling charmer, felt a bit sudden and overall it does sometimes feel as if the individual dramas and concerns of the characters are overshadowed by the epic grandeur being pushed up a notch or two. Kennit's changes bothered me slightly, because from being a complex and quite engaging character he suddenly becomes a fairly stereotypical villain, and that's something that doesn't really make sense in the light of his development in the other books.  I can't decide whether this is somehow the result of Bolt's influence, or whether we're meant to feel that he is more unstable because he's offloaded so much of his past into Paragon's memory. Either way, even though he had a very moving final scene, I felt that it was a rather disappointing end for a character whom I'd been rather enjoying, and who seemed to have a lot of potential. In fact, one major difference between this trilogy and The Farseer (apart from the levels of magic) is that, in The Liveship Traders, everything finishes 'well'. Even if not all of the characters make it to the end, there's no doubt that this is definitely a happy ending, with all the couples neatly paired off with their ideal match and a new world of dragons on the horizon. For me, that's just a little too tidy as an ending. Perhaps I'm just a lover of angst, but I find The Farseer's rather harsh philosophy to be much more powerful and memorable - there is no happy ending: we just have to find our path in life and do what we consider to be right, as far as that is possible. We may never know whether or not we've succeeded. That is probably one reason why The Liveship Traders never quite worked its way as deeply into my heart as the Fitz novels - that, and the fact that in using a wider pool of viewpoint characters, Liveship never gives us the sense of being as intimately connected to anyone as we are to Fitz with his first-person narration. 

Having said all that, I'm very glad to have reread the books, both as stories in their own right and as key parts of the overarching narrative. The amount of thought and care that has gone into Hobb's worldbuilding is truly impressive, and the intertwining plots are intricately detailed and generally very absorbing. If you're keen on high fantasy, you should definitely give them a go; fans of A Song of Ice and Fire, for example, might enjoy the rather different take on dragons. Personally I'm really looking forward to returning to the Six Duchies, even though in the aftermath of Tintaglia's flight, nothing will ever be quite the same again.

Here is the final Liveship Traders cover feature, and I'm afraid that with this book I have only two alternatives to offer you: once again, a disappointingly sane and sensible collection of designs!

The US edition  |  The new UK edition

Robin Hobb's novels:

The Farseer Trilogy

Book I: Assassin's Apprentice

Book II: Royal Assassin

Book III: Assassin's Quest

The Liveship Traders

Book I: Ship of Magic

Book II: The Mad Ship

Book III: Ship of Destiny

The Tawny Man

Book I: Fool's Errand

Book II: The Golden Fool

Book III: Fool's Fate

The Mad Ship: Robin Hobb

(published by Harper Voyager, £8.99, or from Amazon)

The Liveship Traders Trilogy: Book II 

I think there is in the heart of man a place made for wonder. It sleeps inside, awaiting fulfilment. All one's life, one gathers treasures to fill it. Sometimes they are tiny glistening jewels: a flower blooming in the shelter of a fallen tree, the arch of a small child's brow combined with the curve of her cheek. Sometimes, however, a trove falls into your hands all at once... Such were the dragons on the wing.

The second volume of The Liveship Traders trilogy kicks off with a bloody amateur amputation on board ship; and the drama barely lets up until the climax 800 pages later. Along the way, Hobb eventually allows us to see the Rain Wild Traders at first hand and begins to reveal their secrets. These offer some answers to questions arising from the first book, about serpents and dragons and wizardwood; and these answers in turn give rise to questions of their own. The dramatic force of the novel seems to come from the juxtaposition between freedom and imprisonment, and how the characters deal with this. There are many different forms of imprisonment, of course. One can be trapped just as easily by the frivolities of a petty, unfulfilling life, as by being locked in a cabin on a ship; and being limited by one's own fear of the unknown is just as effective as the physical constraints of a wooden chrysalis. Then there are questions about how freedom can be reconciled with being the subject of a higher power - whether that's Kennit, as king of the pirate isles, or the Satrap of Jamaillia whose taxes are throttling Bingtown's Trader families. Where does the boundary between liberation and rebellion lie? Is there really such a boundary at all, except in the minds of those doing the oppressing? And all the time, as the characters wrestle with these human problems, there is something greater, more ancient and much more powerful coming to awareness around them, finding its way into their dreams and demanding a form of release that will have consequences more radical than anyone can imagine.

Rather than do the usual summary of the book, I wanted to focus on some of the things that particularly struck me in this installment. The middle section of a trilogy seems to be a good place to take a step back and look at various unfurling themes. For example, I've noticed an increasing number of scenes and motifs which echo elements of The Farseer, very subtly and playfully, but enough to underscore the fact that both trilogies (and The Tawny Man) come from the same historical roots and are driven by the same ancient forces. The sigil on the door of the Elderling city, beneath the Rain Wild settlement of Trehaug, is a crowned rooster, which the Khuprus family have adopted as their own crest. I couldn't help but be reminded of the rooster crown in Assassin's Quest and wondered if it was simply a fortuitous coincidence, or whether (more likely) there was some deeper significance linking the two that I haven't quite managed to fathom yet. Then, we have a scene in which one character plunges after another into death, to knit the pieces of his being back together and bring him back to life (I avoid giving the names in an attempt not to be too spoilery) - an idea which again is all too familiar from Assassin's Quest. And then there's the question of why Amber's bare hands might have left the distinctive mark of a single silvered fingerprint on the back of Malta's neck, an event that I really don't remember from reading the books first time round. That suggests that either I wasn't concentrating first time, or I hadn't yet made the connection that allowed me to understand the significance of the event. More on this in the next book (I'm restraining myself).

Characters have often commented, both in this book and the last, that Six Duchies women enjoy a greater degree of equality than Bingtown women; but in fact I feel that the female characters in The Liveship Traders are much more vivid and rounded than those in The Farseer. To some extent I think that's the result of having a third-person narrative, which allows us to learn more about a wider range of characters, rather than being restricted to the protagonist's opinions on those around him. By the end of this book, Althea, Malta, Keffria and Ronica have all developed into strong people who have a firm sense of their own agency and duty. For me, the only woman in The Farseer who approached the same level of richness was Kettricken. And, in The Liveship Traders, these central characters are complemented by secondary figures such as Jani Khuprus, Etta and even the liveships Vivacia and Ophelia. It gives the series a balance between male and female characters that is very rare in fantasy. Of course, the characters are not always wise or sympathetic or admirable: for at least the first half of the book Malta continued to exasperate me wildly. It's as though Hobb consciously changed her writing style during these scenes to flatter Malta's romantic notions, and during the scene with Cerwin Trell in the gazebo, it felt as if the characters had somehow strayed in from a Georgette Heyer novel. For all that, Malta's enlightenment - when it does come - is as satisfying as the redemption of Scarlett O'Hara at the end of Gone with the Wind. I'd completely forgotten the important role that Malta comes to play at the end of this book and so found those sections particularly interesting.

The new information about liveships and serpents and dragons made me wonder how these elements fit in with the Skill and the Wit described in The Farseer books. The bonding between a liveship and a family member appears to be very similar to Wit-bonding, but it doesn't seem to make the human more susceptible to the thoughts of animals, and we're frequently told that blood is the conduit for the shared memories. On the other hand there's evidently quite a strong element of the Skill involved in the dragon's ability to control thought and enter dreams, and Wintrow can abandon himself on the flood of Vivacia's memories with the ease of someone slipping into a Skill dream. When Malta has visions of the ancient Elderling city in its heyday, full of people and music and clamour, that's virtually identical to the experience Fitz has when he explores the ruined city in the Mountain Kingdom. And so on. It's interesting, though, that Hobb presents us in The Mad Ship with two substances capable of absorbing memories: wizardwood, which is connected with the real dragons; and the black stone we'd already seen in The Farseer, which appears to be a kind of substitute wizardwood discovered by the Elderlings, and used to create 'simulacra' of dragons which could be brought to life with human memories - as we saw in Verity's case. None of this is vital to following the plot, of course, but I think it's wonderful when an author takes the time to create so thorough a backstory for their world.

There are moments in The Mad Ship, I won't deny it, where things teeter on the edge between grand and overblown. There is much more talk of destiny and prophecy in this trilogy than in The Farseer, and the magical elements of the story are firmly at centre stage. On a previous occasion, I've admitted that I always prefer a 'less is more' approach to magic and this is part of the reason why I prefer the grittier, more naturalistic, more austere Farseer novels. Nevertheless, Hobb is one of the few authors who can carry off talking serpents, living figureheads and dragons with aplomb. Moreover, she ensures that they don't overshadow the absorbing human dramas going on around them. What I said about Ship of Magic remains true for The Mad Ship: with this reread, I'm enjoying The Liveship Traders much more than I did first time round; and I can't wait to carry on to the concluding novel, of which I remember virtually nothing. If you've read and enjoyed Assassin's Apprentice, or any of the other Farseer books, you really should move on to this trilogy, if only to complete the overriding story arc that will eventually conclude in The Tawny Man trilogy.

And, to finish, another selection of covers. I've been thoroughly disappointed by how sane and appropriate the covers are for this trilogy. It's much more fun when there are some completely bizarre designs to celebrate...

The US edition  |  The new UK edition  |  The Italian edition  |  A German edition (which appears to include 'Ship of Magic' as well)

Robin Hobb's novels:

The Farseer Trilogy

Book I: Assassin's Apprentice

Book II: Royal Assassin

Book III: Assassin's Quest

The Liveship Traders

Book I: Ship of Magic

Book II: The Mad Ship

Book III: Ship of Destiny

The Tawny Man

Book I: Fool's Errand

Book II: The Golden Fool

Book III: Fool's Fate

Treasures of the Royal Courts

Tudors, Stuarts and the Russian Tsars

(Victoria and Albert Museum, London, until 14 July 2013)

Along with my Murillo adventures last weekend, I also visited the V&A, to see their  exhibition about the early years of diplomacy between the English court and the Tsars of Russia. This has a (rather tenuous) Lymond connection, as it opens with the expedition of the adventurer Richard Chancellor, who my fellow Dunnetteers will remember from The Ringed Castle. Naturally, considering my enthusiasm for all things Tudor and Stuart, I would have gone to the exhibition anyway, but the Dunnett angle offered a welcome little extra dose of piquancy. For those who haven't yet had the pleasure of Lymond, Richard Chancellor was a Bristol-born explorer who set off in 1552 with a delegation from the Company of Merchant Adventurers, to chart a course around the north coast of Norway. They hoped to find a new route to Russia and, in the process, perhaps even a north-east passage that would give them access to the wealth of Asia. In the latter, they were to be disappointed; and of the three ships on the expedition, two were lost with all their men. Chancellor, however, found his way to Archangel and established contact with the Tsars, laying the foundations for what would become the Muscovy Company, and a long tradition of diplomatic interaction between England and Russia. Those who've read Dunnett will remember that Chancellor made a second voyage to Russia in 1555, returning to England the following year with Russia's first envoy, Osep Nepeja, on board (he made it to London; Chancellor got as far as the coast of Scotland before he was shipwrecked and drowned). This is a story of brave men and incredible - some might say lunatic - determination. Consider, for example, that Elizabeth I's last gift to Tsar Boris Godunov was a coach: a full-size, crimson-velvet-draped carriage. Now imagine trying to transport that carriage, even in pieces, across the 600 miles of frozen, snowy wasteland between Archangel and Moscow. The mind boggles and, more importantly, you immediately sense that there are some wonderful stories waiting to be told.

A similar Muscovy Company seal die (British Museum)  |  The Dacre Beasts  |  A fragile engraved glass chalice

That, for me, is where the exhibition struggles. In choosing such a theme, it had the potential to delve into the fascinating story of these first tentative missions; but there simply isn't enough relevant material in the show to let it do that. The early maps at the start of the exhibition, showing Chancellor's arduous Arctic sea route, hint at the absorbing narrative to come; but the thread is almost immediately lost as we are sidetracked with unrelated Tudor suits of armour and stained glass. This sets the scene for the rest of the show, where a small number of core objects are directly related to Anglo-Russian diplomacy; a larger number give us a picture of general diplomacy in the period; and the vast majority simply serve to give a flavour of Tudor and Stuart court culture. It makes for a slightly frustrating exhibition that never quite sinks its teeth into a promising subject.

Those few exhibits that are genuinely related to Anglo-Russian interaction offer tantalising glimpses of the wider picture. A seal-die of the Muscovy Company is displayed alongside its wax impression showing a ship under sail, but there is little more information on offer about the long and dangerous journey that had to be undertaken each time the English monarchs and the Tsars exchanged envoys or gifts. We hear that Elizabeth I sent a set of virginals to Boris Godunov (who would later receive the coach as well), but the logistical challenge of transporting a fragile musical instrument 600 miles by sledge isn't really brought to life. Less fragile were the gifts of elaborate silverware sent to the Tsars by Elizabeth, James I and Charles I, selections of which are displayed here in a vast cabinet forming the centrepiece of the exhibition. Historically, these are the most important pieces in the show, because so few examples of silverware from this period survive in England, thanks to the ravages of the Civil War. The silver has a typically Jacobean weight and flamboyance - not to my taste, but undoubtedly impressive. Even as mundane an item as a water-pot has been crafted on an immense scale, bristling with decoration: its spout moulded in the shape of a dragon, and its body embellished with fruit, leaves and women's heads. Such items blended the skill of English craftsmanship with the fundamental appeal of precious metal, and the pieces that survive in Moscow are a valuable record, both of what could be produced, but also of the sheer grandeur that was considered appropriate for diplomatic gifts of this type. Moving on, we see a modern miniature model of the famous coach which was carried across the snows from Archangel - which is a bit of a letdown if you were hoping for the real thing, which hasn't made the return journey back from Moscow. And finally there are two glimpses of the Russian side of the story, one in the surprising form of a stuffed pelican, to represent the pair of pelicans sent to Charles II by the Russian ambassador Prince Prozorovsky (those pelicans were the ancestors of the ones which inhabit St James's Park today). Finally there's a Portrait of Prince Petr Potemkin, the Russian envoy in 1681, which is a copy after Kneller's original and shows the ambassador in all the splendour of his native costume, seen through English eyes.

Elizabeth I receiving the Dutch ambassadors  |  A Tsar receiving a delegation in the Hall of the Faceted Chamber

Complementing these few core pieces are exhibits which tell us a bit more about general practices of diplomacy at this period, which suggest the experiences that ambassadors would have had in both countries. These included some pictures I'd never seen before, which were fascinating as historical documents even if their artistic quality wasn't always outstanding. I was intrigued by the little watercolour of Queen Elizabeth I receiving the Dutch ambassadors, executed around 1585 by an unknown artist and now in the Museumslandschaft Hessen in Kassel. This suggested that Elizabethan diplomacy was a good deal more informal than I'd always assumed: where is the enormous hall thronged by courtiers and petitioners, and Gloriana in all her splendour? On the contrary, this shows Elizabeth receiving ambassadors in a surprisingly modest room, either painted or tapestried with a gorgeous green-ground pattern of vines and flowers. Her ladies-in-waiting sit comfortably on the floor (one seems to have fallen asleep) and a handful of courtiers stand around, but the mood is much more relaxed than I'd imagined. The label reports that the woman in black is Mary Queen of Scots, based on an inscription under her feet, but I find this troubling and would want considerably more evidence about the date and reliability of the inscription before I accept that it's her. Even if it is her, I would want to know why the artist has included her, when there's no evidence that she and Elizabeth ever met. 

We also have a glimpse of later English diplomacy under Charles II, in a huge painting of a reception at the Banqueting House, given in 1660 for the Spanish ambassador, the Prince de Ligne (attributed to Francois du Chastel). Here there is pomp and circumstance aplenty, and I was interested to find out that this picture - which I'd never seen before - is just one of a series showing the Prince's ambassadorial visit. All are apparently still in the family collection of the Prince de Ligne; how marvellous it would have been to see the whole set together! We also have the chance to see a Russian diplomatic reception, which looks considerably grander than Elizabeth's informal meeting with the Dutch ambassadors. A painting attributed to Szymon Boguszowick, dating from the early 17th century, shows A Tsar receiving a delegation in the Hall of the Faceted Chamber in the Moscow Kremlin. The Tsar has a full complement of priests, bodyguards and fabulously-dressed noblemen, all assembled in a vaulted chamber where every surface appears to be frescoed with flowers or martial scenes, and the floor is covered with Persian carpets. You can well imagine what Richard Chancellor and his companions must have felt, being received with such splendour. 

Charles II receiving the Prince de Ligne and his entourage at Banqueting House (detail)

Virtually everything else is generically Tudor or Stuart, with no clear Russian connection (save the portraits of courtiers who were involved, more or less actively, with the Muscovy Company). Not that I'm complaining: I love this period and the exhibition offers a slice of social history to complement that in last year's Shakespeare: Staging the World. The Hampden Portrait of Elizabeth I proved to be even more stunning in the flesh than it appears on the posters and catalogue cover, with the Queen's crimson velvet gown set off by the swathes of cloth-of-gold behind her. Many of the V&A's early miniatures were on display, including Hilliard's famous roundel of Elizabeth I and some beautiful Isaac Olivers, in which the finesse of a scalloped lace collar, so delicate as to have been painted with a single hair, can take the breath away. There was a fabulously detailed view of Nonsuch Palace, from a private collection; suits of armour; gorgeously-embroidered nightcaps; and a cushion cover in crimson silk-satin, worked with oak leaves, acorns, blackberries and flowers in golden and silk thread - the crimson is as vivid as the day it was made. Beside the cabinet of silverware, another case shows examples of historical costume, including a lovely Jacobean woman's jacket, once again embroidered with flowers and leaves and vines; and a pair of men's gloves with wide lace cuffs. And, in a case by itself, was a delicate glass chalice, with a ruffled pattern around the body of the bowl and engraved decoration, which is so fragile it's a wonder it's survived. This is all beautiful to look at; but, at the risk of sounding pedantic, it doesn't have any bearing on the supposed subject of the exhibition, and it's hard to see it as anything but padding for the small number of core exhibits.

The show opened first in Moscow and has now moved to London. By the end of my visit, I couldn't help feeling that it had actually been designed specifically for a Russian audience as an introduction to English culture in the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts. This would explain why so many of the exhibits served simply to give a flavour of the age. It also suggests why so many of the portraits are mere copies of the originals - these paintings aren't here for their artistic value, but for an educational purpose, to introduce the various English monarchs and their chief courtiers. The diplomatic connection comes across as merely a useful framework on which to hang the rest of the exhibition, perhaps because it would have provided Russian audiences with a helpful context. Perhaps this worked very well in Moscow, but it doesn't flow as smoothly in London. Many of the people who visit the V&A will already have a knowledge of English history that goes beyond the information on many of the labels and the danger is that you come to the end of the exhibition feeling that you haven't really scratched the surface of the issue under discussion. 

In short: the idea behind the exhibition is great; the exhibits are beautiful; but the concept and contents don't really do justice to one another. I would have loved a more rigorous chronological setup, focusing more tightly on the way that relations developed between the English monarchs and the Tsars; on whether the nature of their gifts changed over time; and on the way the two countries regarded one another across this hundred-year period. Considering the scarcity of material, that would probably have made the exhibition much smaller but it might have given it a greater narrative force and cohesion. The catalogue, based on what I've heard, goes into the story in a little more detail and so that will probably be my next step.

The Hampden Portrait of Elizabeth I (detail)

Murillo at the Wallace Collection

Painting of the Spanish Golden Age

(Wallace Collection, London, until 12 May 2013)

The Marriage of the Virgin

Fresh from Dulwich on Sunday afternoon, I headed up to the Wallace Collection for the second installment of my Murillo adventure. Here the exhibition is very small and, as at Dulwich, precisely focused. With one exception, it contains only pictures that were bought by the 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800-1870) in the mid-19th century and form part of the Collection. It therefore acts not only as an introduction to Murillo, but it shows us Murillo through the eyes of the 19th century, when Lord Hertford was buying his pictures at auction. While at Dulwich we saw the result of a planned decorative scheme executed by Murillo for a specific location, here at the Wallace Collection we see a collection of Murillo's work assembled to suit the taste of one particular collector. Lord Hertford was fairly typical of his age - though with more money and, arguably, better taste - in that he was attracted by pictures which made him happy. He wasn't interested in dark, complex or troubling paintings - as you can judge from the rest of his splendid collection, with its effusive, golden Bouchers and dreamy Watteau fêtes champêtres. In fact, he explicitly told his agent that he liked 'pleasing pictures', and so it's no wonder that he was attracted by Murillo, who had been hailed in the 1840s by the art writer Anna Jameson as the exemplar of the religious painter. 

The first room of the exhibition focuses on those pictures which satisfied Lord Hertford's criteria as 'pleasing', including some which he bought as Murillo but are no longer accepted (like The Virgin and Child with St Rose of Viterbo, which is strikingly wooden). Some of  the paintings in this room are dazzling, however, and my favourite picture in the exhibition - indeed, possibly my favourite Murillo of the day - was the exquisite Marriage of the Virgin (which I've used to open this post). It looks as if it should be painted on a grander scale than it is: at a mere 76 x 56 cm., it's the perfect size for domestic worship. And it's beautiful. Here Murillo's familiar earthy tones of faded crimson and ochre are enlivened by blocks of green, rich blue and the radiant white of the Virgin's gown. The lively brushwork gives the picture a sense of movement that's accentuated by the wedding guests on either side, who are caught in the middle of turning to their companions. And, although the Virgin and Joseph are both idealised (note that Joseph is young here, as he often is in the Spanish tradition), it doesn't become saccharine. I couldn't help wondering about Murillo's influences here: he must have been thinking about Raphael's treatment of the subject (and Perugino's too?). I also find my eyes continually drawn back to the woman on the left in yellow and green. She looks like she's stepped straight out of a Velazquez painting - one of his Sibyls, perhaps. For the first time in the day, I simply stood and wallowed in the beauty of a picture. This is yet more proof that there's much more to Murillo than I've assumed over the years - a greater range, and a greater ability.

That range expands further in the second room, where a second collector casts his shadow over Lord Hertford's pictures. Four of the exhibits - including the one loan from outside the Wallace Collection - come from the collection of the Genoese merchant Giovanni Bielato, who bequeathed seven of his Murillo paintings to the Capuchin Church in Genoa after his death in 1674. Removed from the church during the confusion of the French occupation and (rather shamefully) bought by English dealers, four of these paintings found their way into English hands. Three of them are now in the Wallace Collection; and the fourth, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, is at Wrotham Park. Its loan to the exhibition means that this is the first time we can see all four together for more than 200 years, which is rather wonderful. I can't immediately see any iconographical link between the four pictures here, which suggests that Bielato bought them individually rather than as an intended group - The Rest on the Flight into Egypt balanced by St Thomas of Villanueva, and The Adoration of the Shepherds by Joseph and his Brothers. 

St Thomas of Villanueva  |  Madonna and Child  |  The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Wrotham Park)

These last two pictures were the most striking in the room; there's no doubt of it. The Adoration is a painting that always makes me stop for a moment when I pop into the Wallace Collection just to have a wander. Like The Marriage of the Virgin, it is one of those happy moments in which all of Murillo's elements come together in a synthesis that's just as pleasing to the modern eye as it was to his contemporaries. The dark background and muddy, earthy tones of the shepherds' clothing contrast with the golden illumination given off by the Child, which ties the scene together through the circle of softly-lit faces around the crib. I particularly liked the face of the old shepherd who kneels closest to the Virgin, in which tenderness and wonder jostle with complete bafflement. The animals are wonderfully painted - the sheep, of course, but also the cow which turns its head towards us as if we've distracted it. However, Murillo can't quite help himself - at the top of the painting, completely divorced from everything, are a couple of fat cherubs who seem to have tumbled out of some other, much more sentimental painting - but overall, this is definitely one of the good ones. Less successful as a whole, but much more interesting as an example of what Murillo could do, is Joseph and his Brothers. The catalogue notes that Lord Hertford had qualms about this - it didn't quite live up to his 'pleasing' criteria - but he was eventually persuaded to buy it nevertheless. It was completely new to me - I can only imagine that, because it looks so unlike a Murillo, I've never properly registered it as such. Here all sweetness has been dispensed with and there's some real grit behind Murillo's brush. Joseph is not some piously simpering little saint, but a struggling, scowling, outraged adolescent fighting to be free of his captors. His brothers react with a mixture of placid resolve, consternation and weary indifference ("Not my problem," one seems to say, raising his eyebrows as he turns away with a dismissive gesture). As I said, it doesn't quite gel as a great picture, but I was fascinated by it because it shows Murillo doing something completely different from anything else I've seen by him.

This isn't a large exhibition - in fact, there's a grand total of twelve exhibits - but it's the perfect complement to the Dulwich show and (being the Wallace Collection) it's also totally free. So, if you happen to be passing by Manchester Square in the next few days, catch it while you can. Taking the two exhibitions together, I think I've taken a first step along the road to really appreciating Murillo - these shows have introduced me to paintings in which the brushwork is lively and free, and where he treats still lives and animals with stunning naturalism; I can clearly see the debts that he owes not only to Rubens and Titian and the great artists of earlier generations, but also to his immediate predecessor, Velazquez. And it's been another very welcome little piece building up my understanding of Spanish painting as a whole. Definitely a worthwhile use of a Bank Holiday Sunday!

The Adoration of the Shepherds  |  Joseph and his Brothers

Murillo and Justino de Neve: The Art of Friendship

(Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, until 19 May 2013)

London is the place to be for Murillo at the moment. This exhibition at Dulwich is complemented and echoed by a similar small show at the Wallace Collection, both of which will be ending soon. Yesterday I took the chance to visit both in one day, an experience which forced me to think a little more deeply about Murillo as an artist and which offered two different, but complementary perspectives on his painting. While the Wallace Collection looks at how the Marquess of Hertford assembled his collection of Murillos in the 19th century, Dulwich goes further back in time and homes in on the artist's relationship with his key patron in Seville, the cathedral canon Justino de Neve (1625-1685). 

Murillo lived his whole life in Seville; he was part of the generation that immediately followed Diego Velazquez, and so if you saw the recent Velazquez exhibition at the National Gallery, this makes an interesting counterpoint. The show is almost entirely devoted to Murillo's work for Justino de Neve and focuses on two decorative cycles commissioned by him in Seville: one for the church of Santa María la Blanca, and the other for the Hospital of the Venerables Sacerdotes (a home for retired priests). Santa María la Blanca was dedicated to the Virgin of the Snows - in memory of an event in 4th-century Rome when the Madonna appeared in a dream to a Roman patrician and his wife (a story which Murillo represents in one of his lunettes for the church, on display here). She told them to build a church for her on a plot of land which, when they awoke, was marked with a miraculous August snowfall. That church became Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, but the legend became a popular object of devotion in its own right. During the restoration of Santa María la Blanca, in 1662-65, Justino de Neve commissioned lunettes from Murillo to decorate the nave. The curators of the exhibition have very effectively set these lunettes higher than usual, in the walls of a replica nave, to give visitors an idea of what the effect of the church must have been like. This is a great idea, although there had been so much publicity about the 'nave' that I'd been expecting something grander. Nevertheless, it packs a visual punch to walk into this darkened room and to see, spotlit and glowing ahead of you, Murillo's Immaculate Conception of the Venerables Sacerdotes (1660-65), acting as a kind of high altar, with the lunettes similarly lit on the walls around you.

Two of the lunettes represented Counter-Reformation doctrines that were particularly close to Justino de Neve's heart: The Immaculate Conception and The Triumph of Faith. The other lunette on display is the one I mentioned earlier: The Foundation of Santa Maria Maggiore: The Dream of the Patrician and his Wife (1664-65). Looking at these, it becomes immediately apparent why Murillo was so valued as a painter of religious works. He was able to simplify doctrines and religious legends, making them appealing and accessible to ordinary people. For example, the Roman patrician and his wife are dressed like contemporaries of Murillo's, the sombre yellows and browns of the man's costume contrasting with the vibrant red of his wife's gown. They sleep so deeply that they seem to have been cast under a spell - even the wife's little lapdog is curled up, nose-to-tail. At the upper left of the lunette, in a burst of light, a pretty Virgin appears, pointing out the window to where a fresh fall of snow has carpeted the ground. In each lunette, there is this contrast between the real world - tucked into one corner - and the world only visible through faith - the smiling girls, representing Virgins or Virtues, who appear in radiant blooms of light.

The Triumph of Faith  |  Portrait of Justino de Neve (detail)

In a room off to the side, the exhibition gathers some other Murillos known to have been in Justino de Neve's collection, alongside Murillo's famous Self Portrait from the National Gallery and, also from the NG, his portrait of Justino de Neve himself. Funnily enough, I found this portrait rather stiff in comparison to the more spirited religious and allegorical works outside. With his hooded eyes and severely-trimmed beard and moustache, Justino de Neve looks a good deal sterner than I'd expected (and unavoidably made me think of Lord Vetinari). The most naturalistic part of the picture is his pet dog, who gazes up at him - rather incongruously wearing a big red satin bow.  

The grand Immaculate Conception of the Venerables Sacerdotes, at the 'high altar', wasn't actually painted for the interior of Santa María la Blanca. It was in Justino de Neve's private collection and formed part of a temporary altar that was erected in the square outside the church for its reopening on 5 August 1665 (the feast of the Virgin of the Snows). This  altar also contained two other Murillos from Justino de Neve's own collection: The Infant Christ as the Good Shepherd and The Infant Baptist with the Lamb. Around this temporary altar, the square housed an open-air art exhibition, with paintings by Titian, Rubens and Ribera among others. Just imagine what a spectacle that must have been! The spirit of Rubens hangs heavily over The Immaculate Conception, actually, but Murillo has taken the Flemish voluptuousness of Rubens's paintings and transformed it into something sweeter, simpler and less robust, all illuminated with the tremblingly diffused golden light that became a characteristic of Murillo's late estilo vaporoso (vaporous style). With its rounded, slightly vacant Virgin and its tumbling column of chubby putti separating enlightenment from darkness, Murillo's Immaculate Conception is like Rubens on a sugar rush.

The final rooms depart from Justino de Neve and focus on Murillo paintings from the Gallery's own collection. There are two pictures of beggar boys, and a selection of works which were thought to be by Murillo when acquired by the Gallery, but which have now been (mostly) relegated to copyists or followers. I found it telling that Murillo's portraits of roguish young beggars were not painted for his native Spanish patrons, but for the northern European merchants - many from the Spanish Netherlands - who traded in Seville. It confirmed my sense that these pictures were fundamentally souvenirs for these merchants to take back home: romanticised evocations of picturesque vagrants,  which would become the defining element of Murillo's work from the 18th century until the dawn of the 20th; and which must have had next to no basis in reality (I was fascinated by the gleaming row of improbably white teeth revealed by the grinning urchin in An Invitation to a Game of Argolla). 

An Invitation to a Game of Argolla  |  The Immaculate Conception of the Venerables Sacerdotes  |  The Flower Girl (Spring)

This is where I must be honest. I'm not overly fond of Murillo. I don't dislike him, and I can see that he is sometimes a superb technician, but I have difficulty in shaking off the cloyingly sentimental view of his work bequeathed to me by the Victorians. Simpering Virgins and cute street urchins tend to set my teeth on edge; but, in visiting these two exhibitions yesterday, I began to understand that Murillo was capable of doing more than that. To some extent, I feel the same about Murillo as I did about Barocci (although Murillo lacks Barocci's drama and passion, and doesn't move me so much). What I mean is that there are often excessively sentimental aspects to Murillo's art - such as the self-consciously adorable St John hugging a sheep in The Infant Baptist with the Lamb. However, by looking at the incidental parts of the painting, you can see how talented Murillo was. Look at the verve and sprezzatura of the brushwork on the lamb's fleece, or the precise naturalism of its head. Look, too, at the strangely dark and threatening background, which dissolves into an impressionist suggestion of land and sky, dominated by the kind of briskly-delineated tree that has descendants in Gainsborough oil sketches. The Penitent St Peter (c1675) was another picture that surprised me, because it shows Murillo channelling Ribera and, though he doesn't quite have Ribera's ruthless honesty about the ravages of old age, it's not a bad effort. The crumpled vellum-bound book lying at the foot of the picture, for all its simplicity, was extremely well-done; indeed, Murillo is always very good at still lives - whether a mound of blowsy roses in a flower-girl's lap, or the stiff golden crust on a loaf being handed out by the Christ Child. 

Taken together with the Wallace Collection show (on which more shortly), this exhibition presents us with a more rounded and engaging view of Murillo than many of us will have grown up with. It must be commended for that. I've said before that I like exhibitions with a narrow focus which do their work well, and it was an inspired idea to focus the majority of the show on Murillo's commissions from Justino de Neve. It gave the exhibition a logic and a purpose which ties it together and enables us to imagine what the decorative cycles for Santa María la Blanca and the Hospital of the Venerables Sacerdotes would have looked like, before the French occupation of Seville in the early 19th century led to many of Murillo's artworks being carried off (and sometimes lost to view: The Penitent St Peter has been only recently rediscovered, and this is the first time it has been on display for 200 years).

There isn't much time left before this exhibition closes, but do pop in if you get the chance. It's always lovely to have an excuse to go to Dulwich, especially when the weather's lovely as it is at the moment, and - even if you're not a big fan of Murillo - you, like me, might find yourself beginning to appreciate him a little more.

The effective lighting of the 'nave' created to show off the lunettes © Dulwich Picture Gallery