365 Days at the Met

 August 31, 2020 It feels amazing to be back, yet somehow, perhaps because of its familiarity, as if I'd never been away. As protection during the pandemic, the Met is limiting attendance, and while the Jacob Lawrence exhibit I saw had a fair number of visitors, many of the galleries seemed pretty empty. But the European decorative arts and sculpture galleries I've been visiting often seem pretty empty anyway. Gallery 550 is one of these. It is full of display cases but seems to function mainly as a passageway between the sculpture gallery and the African collection. The gallery is devoted mostly to statuettes,  portrait busts, and highly ornamented religious objects. Most were executed in Italy (or at least by Italian artists) between the 16th and 18th centuries and show a marked Baroque influence- twisting bodies, flowing garments. But I'm interested to see three polychrome terra cotta figural arrangements by a Spanish woman sculptor of whom I'd never heard,