Roman Omen? Italy Nixes Reproduction for Morgan Show

Detail from a Morgan exhibition label, showing Bronzino's "Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua," Chapel of Eleonora of Toledo, Palazzo Vecchio

The illustration, above, on a label in the Morgan Library and Museum's engrossing new show, Michelangelo, Vasari, and Their Contemporaries: Drawings from the Uffizi, shows the Bronzino fresco for which the artist's drawing, below---one of the highlights of the exhibition---serves as a preparatory study (for the figure in the fresco's left foreground):

Bronzino, "Male Nude from Behind," Uffizi Gallery

This drawing occupied almost the entire front page of the NY Times' Friday "Weekend Arts" section, accompanying Holland Cotter's admiring review. He singled out this "buff male nude" but didn't mention the fresco to which it is connected.

Unfortunately, such opportunities to see not only preparatory drawings, but also images of the related finished works (which are mentioned in the labels for the drawings) are frustratingly rare in this otherwise extremely rewarding show.

It's not for lack of trying.

Rhoda Eitel-Porter, the Morgan's curator for the exhibition, answered my question about the absent images by observing that the cost for the rights to use all the reproductions she wanted for the labels was just too high. She added that her entreaties for permission to use an image that she particularly coveted---Jan Rost's tapestry, "Joseph Takes Benjamin at His Servant," related to a Pontormo study of a nude that appears in the show, were rebuffed by Italy on the grounds that the quality of the reproduction was deficient. This baffled her, since the Morgan WAS allowed to publish that image in the show's catalogue.

As it happens, the Rost tapestry is located in Rome's presidential palace, the Quirinale, where Italy has mounted its trophy exhibition of objects recently relinquished by American museums. Couldn't we get a tapestry photograph in exchange?

This casts some doubt on Elisabetta Povoledo's assertion in a NY Times article on Saturday (about Italian loans of sculpture to the Getty Museum for an upcoming Bernini show). Povoledo suggested that "Italian cultural officials are ready to turn over a new leaf" when it comes to cooperating with American museums. Maybe some leaves are still unturned.

Speaking of the Getty, why haven't we yet heard what antiquities Italy will send to it on long-term loan, in exchange for the objects relinquished by the California museum?

And why haven't we yet seen a full list of 10 objects Shelby White is relinquishing to Italy? So many questions...

As an aside, I do have one confession to make: I plagiarized the first two words of the above headline from my new blogging buddy, classics professor Mary Beard.