There is a staggering vision in this exhibition of a woman’s head pressed against the bars of a window, her beautiful face enduring and forlorn. She is carved from a block of medieval limestone. The sculpture irresistibly calls upon your desire to break the bars and free the head, or at the very least reach inside to touch her sorrowful cheek. For refusing to marry, Saint Avia was imprisoned in a solitary cell with a view of the world she can see but never reach. The empathy of the anonymous French artist almost beggars belief. I have never seen anything like it.
Reframed: The Woman in the Window, at Dulwich Picture Gallery, is filled with revelations. Here is Botticelli’s steely Renaissance redhead looking out from a triple-aspect chamber, fingers suggestively clasping the window – and breaking the frame; and Gabriel Metsu’s African woman seated behind a stone sill in red velvet and pearls in the 17th century.
