365 Days at the Met

 September 1, 2025 I arrive at Gallery 644, my last, and am thrilled to discover that it displays scenes of Venice. How appropriate that the gallery is devoted to perhaps the most beautiful, unique city I know. It’s a wonderful finale.   Most of the works are by Canaletto and Guardi, and the wall signs do a good job of explaining the stylistic differences between the two painters. In brief, Canaletto is more detailed and “realistic,” with lots of straight-edged geometric forms, Guardi is freer and more illustionistic. In circling the gallery after reading these thumbnail descriptions, it’s not hard to identify who painted what - although it helps that most of the Canalettos are on one side of the room, most of the Guardis on the other. It’s tempting to write about a  large and authoritative Canaletto depiction of the Piazza San Marco. But instead, I chose for today’s object a smaller oil  (perhaps 28 inches wide and 18 inches high) by the same artist showing the Camp...

August 8, 2025 I had to detour through the Islamic galleries to reach my destination and was abashed and disconcerted to note how unfamiliar they seemed.  Yes, I explored these rooms several years ago, but still.... I would like to think the galleries have been rearranged, and that that explains my confusion. En route to gallery 643, though, I paused to look at a wonderful print of a beached whale surrounded by curious onlookers that was made by a Dutch artist in the first decade of the 17th century. It's the largest of several treatments of this subject and interesting, though on reflection not surprising, to note that the citizens of early modern Europe were as fascinated by these huge creatures as we are today. It's yet another reminder of how many treasures are to be found in the museum. According to the wall signage, the oil paintings in Gallery 643 include both preparatory sketches and finished works. Featuring lots of clouds, putti, and other figures in the sky, the work...

  July 28, 2025 When I walk into gallery 642, I see an odd assemblage of works: four frescos (subsequently transferred to canvas) by Tiepolo and his school that imitate sculpture and depict classical figures representing arithmetic, grammar, geometry, and metaphysics (what is  metaphysics, anyway?); a huge Tiepolo oil painting; and three18th-century  French portraits.  Then I notice that there are two introductory wall signs. The first deals with the role of painters in creating what the sign calls "immersive  interiors, " I have only an instinctive sense of what this term means, but the sign points out that many artists were engaged in the design of theater sets, gardens, tapestries, furniture, and interior decor more generally. The second wall sign discusses the use of pastels in 18th century portraiture. This certainly explains the mix of genres. The Tiepolo painting is so immense - maybe 20 feet across and 12 feet high - that it occupies a whole wall of the ...

  July 19, 2025 I was ambivalent about going to the Met today - not that I had anything much better to do - but what a spectacular return it turned out to be! Gallery 641 contains 11 canvases by Goya, all of them notable.  These include “Two Majas on a Balcony” - although I learn that the Met version may have been painted by a follower. The original is in a private collection, and I'm annoyed that it's inaccessible to the general public. Also in the gallery is an old friend,  "Don Manuel Osorio, " a work I've known since I was young and first saw it in Betsy Chase's wonderful book on art for children. Goya depicts the little boy, dressed in bright red and holding his pet magpie on a leash, while three cats - one of which is indicated only by a  black form and shining eyes -  crouch watchfully, either hypnotized by or preparing to pounce. on the bird.  A number of portraits show Goya’s skilled brushwork, especially in painting lustrous fabrics. Today’s selec...

  May 11, 2025 Going to the museum only a few hours before my car service was scheduled to take me to JFK for my flight seemed crazy enough, even when I decided to save a few minutes by cabbing over to the East Side. When I discovered that  81st Street  was blocked off between Columbus and Central Park West, necessitating a long (and costly) detour, I thought briefly about just going back home. But I wanted to get to one more gallery before a three-week hiatus set in, and I was able to do that, although my visit to that gallery was very abbreviated The theme of Gallery 640 is painting on different “supports” - that is, media other than canvas, including copper, wood, plaster  as is fresco painting), and stone. On display are works from different countries that span the period from about 1330 to 1860. One I particularly like is an oil on copper painting, measuring about 24 inches high and 16 inches high, by Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri), a Bologna-born painter (yet ...

 May 3, 2025 Gallery 639 contains a number of small oil paintings, and its introductory wall sign bears the title "Oil Sketches." In fact, however, only some of the paintings are "sketches" - that is, preparatory works intended to guide larger treatments of the same subject. The remaining paintings are what I would term character studies - paintings of men and women meant not to capture a likeness, as a portrait would do,  but to convey a generalizable quality rather than one tied to a particular individual. Many works of both types are by well-known artists, including Rubens, Van Dyck, and Tintoretto. My choice for today, in contrast, is by a Roman painter I'd never heard of, Orazio Borgianni, whose dates are 1578-1616. It's a relatively small oil on canvas, about 20 inches high and 15 inches wide, showing the head of an old woman.  Her forehead is deeply wrinkled; lines, too, surround her cast-down eyes. The skin above her bodice  has a crepe-y consistency...