365 Days at the Met

October 15, 2019 When I arrived at the museum, I wasn't pleased to find that galleries 537 through 543 were all closed. I had a pleasant conversation with one of the volunteers staffing an information desk, who urged me to go see a special exhibition about the armor of Maximilian I. I was tempted --on the crosstown bus I'd just had a conversation with an acquaintance who told me she'd heard that the armor show is great --  but the show is also sizable, and my time was limited. So I moved on to gallery 544. which centers on the Renaissance in France, between 1480 and 1600. On display are works in a number of media: Limoges enamels (both religious subjects and portraits), some small oil portraits on wood (I'm struck by the ubiquity of beards in these portraits), a huge fireplace, stained glass, and carved oak doors and panels from choir screens.  I thought it would be interesting to compare two Annunciations, a Limoges enamel produced in the first half of th...

October 10, 2019 Gallery 537 contains paintings and statuettes from the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. Beyond that, there is considerable diversity in the items on display. While most come from Italy, there are also statuettes from France and Germany and paintings from Spain and the Netherlands. The statuettes have both religious and classical themes; the paintings include both religious subjects (many Madonnas, a number of crucifixions) and portraits.  We learn in intro art history classes that classical mythology offered sculptors and painters a rationale for depicting nudes. On the basis of the evidence in this gallery, Hercules was a popular subject, offering many opportunities to portray a well-muscled male struggling with a lion, a boar, or a human. There's also a notable statuette of Bacchus accompanied by a panther who sits rather placidly at the god's feet,  apparently begging for a bunch of grapes that Bacchus holds in his left hand above the animal....

October 7, 2019 Gallery 536, which adjoins the Velez Blanco patio,  is yet another room I've never seen before. It holds a great collection of bronze statuettes made between 1450 and 1600, primarily in Italy. Most of the works on display have classical themes.  That Renaissance artists were inspired by ancient Greece and Rome is one of the most basic things anyone who takes art history ever learns, but that truism (truth?) is amply clear in this gallery. Today's work is a  bronze statuette of Triton and a nereid, perhaps 8 inches high and 4 inches long,  made in Padua around 1525. It is labeled as "in the manner of Riccio," aka Andrea Briosco, who was nicknamed "Riccio" for his curly hair. I'd never heard of him before, but he is described by the accompanying placard as "one of the first great entrepreneurs of the small bronze." His use of classical imagery made him popular among humanist collectors, and his success led him to be wid...

October 4, 2019 Gallery 535 is reached by a stairwell leading up from the Velez Blanco patio and is devoted to the decorative arts of Spain between 1450 and 1700. The objects on display reveal the indebtedness of Spanish art and artisans to the Islamic world, Italy, and Northern Europe. I read, for example, that Valencia became a center of lusterware manufacture in the 1300s, the city's ceramists having learned the technique from Muslim and Morisco potters. And Venetian glassmakers came to Catalonia in the mid-16th century; many of the Catalan glass objects display the whorls and swirling white lines characteristic of Murano.  Three factors led me to choose  today's object,  a small (perhaps 1 1/2 inch long)  17th century reliquary pendant depicting the Annunciation and fashioned of gold, enamel, rubies, crystal, pearl, and rock crystal.  F irst, it's really lovely; the small rubies encircling the enamel center immediately caught my eye. Se...

October 2, 2019 Gallery 534 is the Velez Blanco patio, a space I've passed by innumerable times but scarcely ever entered. (I do have clear memories, however, of a temporary exhibit of old violins held in the patio  that Mama and I went to years ago; I specifically recall our noting that a number of the violins were owned by physicians, presumably as investments but also, I'd like to think, because they were amateur violinists.) I had always assumed that Velez Blanco was the name of the family that owned the castle from which the patio was taken. But this turns out to be wrong. Velez Blanco was actually an area of eastern Andalucia that was a Moorish stronghold. One Don Pedro Fajardo y Chacon was a key figure in the Reconquista, and a royal decree gave him title over the region. He built a castle there between 1506 and 1515 and hired itinerant stonemasons from Lombardy to decorate the courtyard  with marble carvings of urns, trellises, masks, griffins, coats of arms...

September 30, 2019 Gallery 533 is a large space devoted to the decorative arts of Central Europe during the 18th century - more specifically, the arts of the German-speaking states.  When I visited Prague, I came face to face with how little I know about the history of Central Europe, and this gallery further reminded me of that.  The gallery includes objects of glass and silver, wood carvings, and a great many Meissen porcelains.  I look at these porcelains first, and I'm impressed by their unanticipated delicacy and refinement. The gallery also contains a number of pieces of furniture, which are just as ornate and rococo as their French counterparts - if anything, even fussier and heavy- looking.  I suspect that the pleasure I take in the gallery is completely shaped by examining the small, delicate objects before I focus on the bulky chairs and tables.  I wonder if my impressions of the 18th century French galleries would have been different if...