Wednesday 1st March 2023

At Donatello Royston King corrected my dress manually. He didn’t want me buttoned to the neck. The coat was awful anyway. My grey Zara – on the previous Friday at the Abbey I’d crashed with outfit dissatisfaction. If only I’d been in that coat and not the the Oliver Spencer which contrasted too harshly with my white summer-into-winter slacks.

Nothing more terrible than realising an outfit error when too far from home to turn back. Which was why I was trying to make a comeback in the Zara coat at the V&A on the Monday.

There was a surprise third person for Donatello – one of the War Correspondents. It can’t have been the one with the eye patch because she’d dead. In any case, this one didn’t have an eye patch. Nor the one who’s a friend of Genevieve Suzy. Tilda Finkelsgarten was revealed. She was the hero of the White House Coup 1993, as she found occasion to explain.  What a scoop that was. All the other correspondents had gone on holiday. She led her team through the tank barricade. Someone was left behind to inform their embassies if they didn’t return. In the event, the tank drivers refrained from gunning her down. Instead they asked for cigarettes: enthusiasm for the coup clearly reduced to a minimum but a scoop for her.

Tilda and Royston stood in the middle of the exhibition planning the future of the museum and criticising the audience as mostly on sticks and white. That had not been the idea when Royston gave the money for the extension where the exhib was lodged. It was quite expensive, maybe £50 million.

Why did the V&A need an extension anyway? Isn’t it big enough already?

I didn’t like the space – gloomy, ugly roof and all the exhibits crammed against the walls or poked into corners, with the infirm crowding round. I adore Donatello. Always have done. The bronze David doing the catwalk completely bare but for a hat…That couldn’t come, of course. The Bargello would never have let it out. But the St John the Evan has come. I’ve always wondered about that metal halo stuck on to his head – could anything be less halo-like?

I don’t know how Donatello is explained. He was so early. I’d not realised. Born 1386. Seems to have arrived as a fully-formed Renaissance artist although perhaps the small scale and charm of his work is a legacy of the Middle Ages, but it’s a charm that is somehow shocking for the period. The astonishing bass-relief of the Madonna and Child I’d never seen before. What a revelation – so intense the gaze between them. Even the Gay Mother had heard about it 250 miles away. These things make an impact.

It’s a demanding exhib. Lots of small things to look at. Emphasis on craft, how innovative Donatello was and how he experimented with many different techniques.

At lunch suddenly we were cruising. Royston had commented earlier on the only person below 50 present at the show. Spray-on black jeans, skin-fade with top quiff. Now we were lunching with him. Except he didn’t take anything because of cost. I said, ‘Duchy salmon is £10 a pack. What is to be…’ ‘Be quiet,’ Royston said. Too banal. He was discussing Royal affairs with this person, who is interviewing for the Collection this week. Unbelievably he’d read The Quest for Queen Mary by Pope-Hennessey –  so must get the job. I managed to tell a story from the Lees-Milne diaries: the one when the Queen said at Badminton that she was opening Sandringham to the public. ‘Mummy’s furious with me for doing it.’ Lees-Milne said he rather agreed with Mummy.

The cruising spirit was raging. There was a random man on my other side who appeared to want action there and then. He insisted on linking via Insta. Quite honestly it could have been a strangler. He was that forward. Apparently his parents had gone to Isleworth for the day. The sooner they came back and got their offspring under control the better.  Where was the War Correspondent when you needed her? She was lunching but had had to dash off because of those Chinese balloons.

Eventually it was just Royston and myself. I was marched to various galleries where I seemed to have been before – the Winchester stained glass, a jewel of Queen Victoria’s, the Devonshire tapestry, some fabulous old embroidered cope. All English things, or British. It was an antidote, you see. Not European, like Donatello, assumed to be superior.Not: only European culture good, like French food, better than British. No, the greatness of Our Nation. We led the way in embroidery. Our objects in general hardly barbarian.

‘Just rejoice’ as Margaret would have said.

Donatello – Champion of Rilievo Schiacciato or ‘Squashed Relief’; this Piece is in the V&A anyway. Miracle

Donatello: Madonna and Child. From Berlin, I think. The Intensity has Shattered the World 

St John the Bap: Treasure from the Bargello brought to London

V&A African Fashion Exhib. Some Very good Designers who are African making Lovely Clothes

African People in Fashion

Handbag from Africa