365 Days at the Met

June 29, 2018 Gallery 175 centers on the art of Cyprus during the classical period. It contains a small but (presumably) select number of limestone grave steles, column capitals, and statues.I particularly like a small statuette of a dog attacking a hare - so lifelike you can practically see, and certainly imagine, the terror on the hare's face as the dog sinks its jaws into its  back.There's also a terracotta head of a man whose curly hair, beard, and mustache are indicated by stylized spirals - there must be a hundred of these spirals, all told. I chose today's object because of its weirdness; I've never seen anything like it before. It's a  limestone footstool, a bit less than 3 feet long and maybe 9 inches high, that dates from the first half of the 5th century B.C.E. At the center of the carving on the side is depicted a chimera, a mythical creature that's part lion, part she-goat, and part snake (here the lion's curling tail). The lion's...

June 28, 2018 I   wasn't looking forward to returning to Cyprus today. A quick walk through gallery 174, today's destination, en route to another gallery a few weeks ago left me with the impression that the gallery contained lots of Archaic statues, with their enigmatic smiles, and little else. While the gallery has plenty of these, it also has many other things of interest. And the history of Cyprus is itself fascinating: The island was settled and sometimes ruled by Mycenaeans, Phoenicians, Assyrians, and Persians, and finally conquered by Alexander the Great - and I'm probably leaving some group out. The artifacts reflect this cultural admixture, perhaps most strikingly (to me) in a large limestone sarcophagus - arguably the most important work in the Cesnola collection, according to the caption - on one end of which are sculpted nude images of Astarte and on the other images of Bes. There are lots of small terracotta statuettes, too, which give a vivid sense of...

June 27, 2018 Galley 169 displays objects from the Roman empire. Many things catch my attention. There's a coin, minted at Tarsus, that shows a sailing ship and commemorates a shipment of grain to that city, and for the first time, I really understand the allure of coin collecting, for what the coins tells us about their users and what they prized. There's a small glass flask whose yellow and blue tones identify it as having been made in Cologne (a Roman city, I'm reminded).  There's a marble sarcophagus lid depicting a reclining couple, with his arm  draped affectionately around her shoulder, though her face (not his) is unfinished; the caption speculates that perhaps it was commissioned in advance and he then predeceased her. There's an under life-size  marble portrait head of an intelligent-looking, jowly man; what's unique about it is that his head is turned to the right rather than directly facing the viewer.   I decide to write about a square m...

June 25, 2018 This gallery (168) contains a wealth of objects from the Roman Empire: marble portrait busts, an elaborate mosaic floor, glassware (including one incomplete but impressive beaker depicting gladiators and animals), coins, a chaise longue and marble table (both heavily restored, unsurprisingly), and much else. My favorite is a life-size marble statue of Venus, carved between the first century B.C.E. and the first century C.E.  She stands with her weight on her left leg and her right hip raised, giving her body a graceful curve. She is slim, with high rounded breasts and a stomach that swells only slightly beneath her navel. Her hair is parted in the middle and is drawn back at the sides. She gazes downward, and when I look up at her face, I'm struck by how young she looks - adolescent, really, or maybe in her early 20s, with her unlined face and slighly open mouth.  She is clad only in a piece of cloth that is knotted over her pubis.Her arms have been lost,...

June  22, 2018 Gallery 167 brings together wall paintings in a reconstruction of a bedroom in the Villa Boscotrecase. It's called the Black Room with good reason: The bottom and top sections of the walls are painted Pompeiian red, while the middle ground is black, divided into different areas by thin, attenuated columns. It's all very dark, and at first I find it really uninteresting. Then I notice  the refinement and delicacy with which the ornamenting details in this middle section are painted. On the lefthand wall is what seems to be a door or window flanked on either side by two thin columns. It's the beauty of these columns that grabs me: They are interrupted at intervals by fanciful forms and by exquisitely painted flowering plants that grow out of them. Atop the outside column on either side perches a bird; the orange underwing of the bird on the right is clearly visible. Between the inner columns is a larger space topped by an ornate shelf or lintel on wh...

June 20, 2018 Gallery 166 is devoted to art of the Augustan age. Many objects appeal to me. There's an extraordinary bowl composed of four quarter-circles of purple, blue, yellow, and clear glass, each topped with a millefiori garland, that have been fused together; it's so beautiful that it makes me exclaim out loud. There's a charming bronze statue of a young boy serving as an acolyte at religious ceremonies. And there are a couple of small amulets carved on the exterior to resemble walnuts while on their interiors, couples making love are shown. In one, the woman sits on a chair, her legs thrown around the man, while in the other, he is kneeling before her and her legs are hoisted over his shoulders as he penetrates her.  Carrying such objects around must have  made their owners feel a bit risqué.  The work I want to write about today is a fresco from a bedroom of the Villa Boscotrecase, located near Boscoreale and also buried by the eruption of Vesuv...

June 18, 2018 Galley 164 revolves around Hellenistic art and the Hellenistic tradition in the Roman world. Most of the objects are from Greece or Italy, although I read that one small bronze statue is "said to be" from Trebizond (Trabzon), a reminder of the degree to which the Hellenistic influence was diffused throughout the Mediterranean and adjacent areas (and especially noteworthy to me because I've been to Trabzon!). In fact, many items in the gallery are "said to be" from one place or another. I suppose they were donated to the Met at a time when the museum paid less attention to provenance than it does now. Today's object is a life-size  portrait bust from   "50 B.C.E to 54 C.E." (how could this latter date be specified so precisely, I wonder?) and said to be from Trastevere. It's an arresting image, which, unfortunately, I couldn't photograph head-on because of reflections off the case in which the bust is housed. The man...

June 14, 2018 Again, I've muffed the gallery numbers, partly as a result of misleading (to me) arrows indicating room numbers, more importantly because I didn't look at the map beforehand. The real gallery 163 is a room I never even knew existed - it's lodged behind a staircase - but what a treasure trove it houses. I would have described the contents as Hellenistic decorative arts, but the caption describes the gallery as presenting "luxury arts," and given the quality of the items of gold and glass and bronze on display,  I wouldn't quarrel with that designation. Many objects compete for my attention, among them two beautiful twisted gold armbands representing female and male tritons and a silver rhyton with a handle in the form of a horse's leaping forequarters. I also admire: terracotta statuettes of Nike shown flying; a bronze statuette of a nude male dancing, his body twisted in a contrapposto position; and another bronze statuette of a v...

June 13, 2018 The air outside is heavy with humidity, exhausting just to be in, and I promise myself that if my skipped galleries aren't open, I will go home and maybe take a nap. But they are open, and I couldn't be more delighted, because Gallery 165 (which I initially misidentified as 163) is the "cubiculum nocturnum" (bedroom) from Boscoreale, about a mile from Pompeii and, like Pompeii, buried with the eruption of Vesuvius. It's one of the Met's great treasures, and I am especially happy to see it after our time in Pompeii and the archaeological museum in Naples.  The room is perhaps 21 feet long and 14 feet wide -- my estimates are inexact -- and dates from about 50-40 B.C.E. The detail and vivid color of the frescoes are really fabulous.  Each of the long side walls is divided into four panels by three painted trompe-l'oeuil columns, two Corinthian and one Ionic. The first and third panels in from the entrance show fanciful, multi-storied...

June 12, 2018 Gallery 173, which is located on the second floor above the main classical collection, takes us back in time to Bronze Age Cyprus, with objects dating from the first millennium B.C.E. At first, I am confused by the break in chronology, but then I notice that the objects are all part of a collection amassed by one Luigi Palma di Cesnola, an American who, in the second half of the 19th century, financed many treasure-hunting expeditions to Cyprus and sold his collection to the Met, which now has the most comprehensive collection of Cypriot art in the Western Hemisphere, according to the blurb on the wall. Presumably, a condition of the sale was that the collection be shown of a piece and not divvied up.  The blurb says that Cesnola saw his work as rivaling that of Schliemann at Troy, but it's my sense, anyway, that Schliemann was by far the more serious archaeologist. Cesnola might be seen as more of a grave-robber, since many of the objects were taken from tom...

June 11, 2018 Gallery 172 is the venue for a temporary exhibit called "Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art." The title is something of a misnomer, because the exhibit, in addition to Medusa, presents images of sphinxes, sirens, and Scylla, all culled from the Met's own collection.  The underlying commonality is that all of these mythological creatures were women who lured men to their deaths.  The show is small and accessible, but my experience of it is diminished, not enhanced, by too-loud music I would rather not hear. A caption explains that the image of Medusa was transformed from that of a horrifying round face with a protruding tongue -- an image I've often seen on representations of Achilles' shield and one capable of turning men to stone)-- to that of a beautiful woman with long, snaky tresses. This change is attributed to the idealization of the human form associated with the classical period.  The two objects visible in today's ima...

June 8, 2018 This enormous study gallery (171), which has 60 display cases, is a testament to the size and richness of the Met's classical collection. It has everything from Neolithic terracottas to Greek vases to Etruscan bronze statuettes to Roman glass to carved gems from many different cultures, and much, much more. If I were curator, I would have a hard time deciding what to show in the main galleries and what to relegate to this study gallery, since so many of the gallery's holdings are so fine. The objects aren't labeled; instead, there are computerized displays that allow you to search relatively easily for specific items, and I do a lot of scurrying between the cases and the displays to learn more about particular objects. While it would be nice to have descriptions inside or beside the cases, I realize this is impractical, and the museum has done a very nice job of providing some information on each of what are literally thousands of objects. Today'...

June 5, 2018 This large gallery (170) is devoted to the Etruscans. While not exactly hidden, it is tucked away on the mezzanine and thus breaks the chronological continuity of the other classical galleries devoted to Greece and Rome. But what a discovery it is! I had never particularly focused on the Etruscans before, and I'm blown away by their skill in working bronze (as the many statuettes of human figures, animals, and satyrs attest), by the beauty of the gold jewelry, by the elegant terracotta cinerary urns, and by the general material wealth of the culture on display here. The inevitable object of the day, which occupies pride of place in the middle of the room, is a bronze chariot, perhaps 10 feet long from the yoke to the back wheels, dating from the second quarter of the 6th century B.C.E. and found at Monteleone, near Spoleto. This and similar chariots were apparently not used in combat; rather, they had a ceremonial function and carried important personages i...

May 31, 2018 This enormous galley (162) covers a wide swath of time and territory, from Hellenistic Greek objects, largely ones found in southern Italy around Taranto, to Roman statuary, includng a pretty phenomenal marble sarcophagus carved all over the front with figures of Dionysus and his followers. Many of the statues are in fragmentary form, missing heads, limbs, or both.  You do get a sense of their beauty and power, but frankly, after the Borghese and Vatican collections, they are a bit disappointing.  I also feel pressed for time to examine the holdings as closely as I'd like or I should. Given the wealth of objects, I'm at something of a loss about what to write about. My first impulse is to write about a small terracotta incense burner in the form of five women in a circle, whose heads support trays on which the incense was laid. What's interesting to me is that the figures are painted: their clothing red and gold, their hair brown. As often as I'v...