365 Days at the Met

 November 18, 2024 The introductory sign in gallery 609 notes that in early 16th century religious painting, large single panels came to replace polyptych. a development that aimed to create a more direct relationship between image and viewer.  The gallery is home to several of these large paintings, including an early work by Raphael, an  enthroned Madonna and child surrounded by four saints, along with panels by Correggio, Perugino, Andrea del Sarto, and a couple of painters I'd never heard of before, including Andrea Solario.  The work I chose to write about today, though, is a triptych painted around 1510 by Francesco Granacci, another painter hitherto unknown to me.  Its small size (its central panel is perhaps 12 inches wide, the two side panels 4 o4 5 inches wide, and the height maybe 30 inches) makes me think that it was created for private devotion, a supposition that the object label confirms. (I am learning something!) The central panel shows the Cruc...

  November 12, 2024 "Faith and Love in Venice" is the title used to describe the  Cinquecento Venetian paintings with religious and secular themes that are grouped together in gallery 608. The wall sign makes a useful distinction between the "painterly" style of the Venetians and the more "linear" style of the Florentines (although it doesn't use these terms, which I heard a lifetime ago in Fine Arts 13), and notes the influence of Venetian painters on later artists like Rubens, Velasquez, and Manet.  I suspect it's the fleshy female nudes on display that attract the attention of most visitors to the gallery, me included.  Foremost among these works is a painting called "Venus and the Lute Player" made by Titian and his workshop between 1565 and 1579. I'm not sure whether its drawing power stems from the fact that it faces me when I enter the gallery, that it's very largee (perhaps 6 1/2 feet wide and 5 1/2 feet high), or that it...

  November 10, 2024 The organizing theme of Gallery 607 is "The Reformation and the Age of Durer."At first I think that the curators are merely hopscotching  between Italy and Northern Europe in consecutive galleries. But then, I realize that the basic organizing principle of the galleries is chronology, the Reformation is perhaps sthe most critical historical development of the first half of the 16th century ,and Albrecht Durer the era's leading artist, at least in the North. In any case, the wall signs do try to show the connections between the two major loci of artistic innovation, and Durer, with his extensive travels in Italy, personifies those connections. In Durer's small (perhaps 24 inches high and 19 inches wide) 1505 painting entitled "Salvator Mundi", Christ's's body has what strikes me as an n Italianate sense of weightiness and corporeality.  Depicted as the world's saviior, he raises two fingers of his right hand in blessing, while ...

  November 2, 2024 Gallery 606 centers on Venetian paintings of the second half of the 15th century. It includes a sweet Bellini  "Madonna and Child" with an Italianate landscape in the background, and a lovely small painting of the same subject by Cima da Conegliano. But to my surprise, the painting that lives with me most is a 1476 "Pieta'" by Carlo Crivelli.  (I always thought of a "Pieta'" as depicting Mary holding the body of the crucified Christ, and, since the scene also includes the figures of John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalene, I would have labeled this painting a "Lamentation" instead, but maybe I've been too influenced by Michelangelo's Pieta'.)  This is a work I would never want it in my home, because I find it surpassingly ugly, but its emotional force is undeniable. And Crivelli recognized that people are  ugly in their grief.  Measuring perhaps 26 inches wide and 30 inches high at its highest point, the pane...

  October 31, 2024 Gallery 605 turns out to be dedicated to Early Netherlandish painting, and it's my favorite in the "600" galleries so far. for reasons that aren't altogether clear to me. Is it that most of the painters' names are familiar to me, among them, Bosch (the "Adoration of the Magi" scene I described on Day 227 has been rehung here), Gerard David, Petrus Christus? Is it that the signage makes clear the connections between Netherlandish and Italian painters in the 15th century? Is it the luminosity of the works themselves? Is it that Rogier van der Weyden's portrait of Francesco d'Este greets me as I enter the gallery, and I instinctively know that I want to write about it before I look at anything else?  I've always liked this small portrait, which measures only about 17 inches high and 10 inches high.  At first, I imagined to be a wedding portrait because Francesco holds a ring delicately between his right thumb and index finger....