[Stones] Stonehenge at the Royal Academy

[Gerald Ponting]

If you are in London this week and have not been to the Royal Academy exhibition 'Making History', it is well worth a visit. It's been on since September (first pointed out here by Littlestone) and ends on 2nd December. The theme is the activities of the Society of Antiquaries of London over the past 300 years. See http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/makinghistory/

There's a great deal there that is not prehistoric, but nevetheless fascinating - documents, artefacts, pictures. There's an almost life-size, full-length portrait of Stukeley besinde his plan of Avebury.

But the best bit is the final room, completely devoted to Stonehenge. There are 22 historic paintings drawings and plans of the site, including the Lucas de Heere 1572 original watercolour and that lovely image from about 1340 of Merlin casually lifting a lintel into place - one of the best explanations of how they got up there, I feel :-)  

I was a little disappointed that the 14thC manuscript from Corpus Cristi, Canbridge was not there (though there is a full-page illustration in the catalogue .... buy one at £22.95 paperback or £40 hardback if you can't get to the exhibition). However, this lack is compensated by a newly discovered image form France that I'd not heard about before - though there is a lot about it here (http://www.britarch.ac.uk/BA/ba92/feat1.shtml)
with a copy of the image here (http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1957926,00.html)

To see the originals of these early items alone is worth the admission price and the trip to London.

Gerald 




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