Tomorrow is a big day for the Metropolitan Museum:* The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini opens. I saw it last night at the opening, and it’s a knockout. Prepare for rave reviews.
The exhibit, curated by Keith Christiansen, chairman of European paintings at the Met, starts with a premise: that early Renaissance Italy produced “the first great age of portraiture in Europe,” a time when artists created fabulous portraits that start with the simple recording of features but go way beyond that. As an aside, I asked a Met official about the origins of the show, and she said — I won’t mention her name, because I wasn’t thinking of reporting it when we spoke — that “Keith has been talking about this show for ages.”
It shows in the 160 works that are on view, including paintings, drawings and sculpture.
That’s the second thing this exhibit has going for it — the sculpture, which is truly wonderful, with details that practically invite viewers to touch (Don’t!). These pieces are far less familiar to regular museum-goers than the paintings, which is partly because many of the paintings are in the Met’s permanent collection.
But don’t think that this show comes mainly from the Met collection; there many, many loans from many European collections, including a lot from Germany — the exhibit was co-organized and shown previously at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (very few come from private collections). One of my favorite paintings in the show was chosen as the cover of the catalogue, Ghirlandaio’s Portrait of an Old Man and a Boy (top), borrowed from the Louvre.
A third attribute is the mix of media and the way they are displayed. The sculpture sits right there with the paintings, and there’s plenty of room to walk around each of the pieces. Drawings, while not present in every gallery, are also displayed with paintings and sculpture, often related, instead of being relegated to a dark room of their own.
The fourth thing I love is that, despite the title of the show, this exhibition contains works by many many artists who are not household names. Some of them should be. If I had to pick one, it would be Pisanello. He dominates one large gallery, in my opinion, beautifully — with drawings, paintings and medallions.
That’s his Filippo Maria Visconti drawing in charcoal (also from the Louvre) and what Christiansen says is a rare painting by him, Leonello d’Este, from the Accademia Carrara, Commune of Bergamo, at right (sorry he faces the margin).
There are so many other wonderful images in this exhibition that I’ve uploaded a few more below, without commenting on them.
But there’s one I want to call to the attention of writers, who frequently use the phrase “thrown into high relief,” to mean sharp delineation or contrast. I can’t show you an image of it — but you’ll know it when you see it in the exhibition. It’s a marble of Cosimo by the workshop of Antonio Rossellino, a side view of his face that includes both eyes — the relief must extend four or five inches (I had no opportunity to get close enough to try to measure it). High relief, indeed.
Here are a few more images, not so common in reports so far, from top to bottom: Mantegna’s Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan, Settignano’s Bust of a Young Woman, and Bellini’s Fra Teodoro of Urbino as Saint Dominic.
Gorgeous, huh?
Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum
*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met