One could probably take three days to view all The
Metropolitan Museum of Art has to offer. But I had only a Saturday afternoon to spend this time, and wanted to focus on European and American painting.
The Museum is $25 for all non-New York residents and photography is permitted. The building itself stands adjacent to Central Park and is a beautiful oasis in the middle of Manhattan.
European Paintings
Below are some highlights from my own photos and the full collection can be viewed
here.
I like to learn about the biographies of the artists as I think their lives are inextricable from their work. Sometimes - as with the case of Caravaggio of whom I was already a fan given his genius - I only love him more as I discover the details of his tumultuous and tragic life. He was most certainly a man with many demons but through his painting, I find much evidence that he struggled greatly and wanted to better himself. And in other cases - as with Jacques-Louis David - I have always loved his Neoclassical style and am in awe of his talent but I am not fond of the man himself. And it does make me look at his work differently.
Two fantastic bio-documentaries I would recommend from the same "Power of Art" series:
Caravaggio - this one actually moved me to tears
Jacques-Louis David
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| Detail - Carle (Antoine Charles Horace) - The Triumph of Aemilius Paulus (1789) |
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| Detail - Carle (Antoine Charles Horace) - The Triumph of Aemilius Paulus (1789) |
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| Detail - Carle (Antoine Charles Horace) - The Triumph of Aemilius Paulus (1789) |
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| Velázquez (Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez) - Portrait of a Man (1635) |
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| Detail - Jusepe de Ribera (called Lo Spagnoletto) - The Holy Family with Saints Anne and Catherine of Alexandria (1648) |
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| Detail - Jacques-Louis David, La Mort de Socrate (Death of Socrates) (1787) |
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| Jacques-Louis David, La Mort de Socrate (Death of Socrates) (1787) |
Jacques-Louis David’s masterpiece depicts the death of
Socrates as recounted in Plato’s
Phaedo as his mentor had been charged with
corruption of the youth and sentenced to die by poison Hemlock. David signed
the work in two places: once under Crito, the distraught young philosopher apprentice
clutching his master’s thigh (signifying his identification with the subject) and once near Plato as a gesture of gratitude for
the
Phaedo which had inspired his painting. I wrote a bit more on the painting
here.
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| Detail - Jacques-Louis David signature under Plato |
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| Detail - Jacques-Louis David signature under Crito |
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| Detail - Poison Hemlock |
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| Bronze Coin - Leonello (Marquess of Este and Lord of Ferrara) c. 1443 |
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| Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre - The Death of Harmonia (1741) |
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| Detail - Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre - The Death of Harmonia (1741) |
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| Jean François de Troy - The Triumph of Mordecai (1736) |
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| Botticelli - Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Medallion (1485) |
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| Detail - Biagio d'Antonio - The Story of Joseph (c.1500) |
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| Sebastiano del Piombo (Sebastiano Luciani) - Portrait of a Man, said to be Christopher Columbus (1519) |
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| Corrado Giaquinto - The Penitent Magdalen (1750) |
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| Detail - Peter Paul Rubens - The Wolf and Fox Hunt (1616) |
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| Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) - The Musicians (1597) |
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| Caravaggio painted himself into the scene |
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| Nicolas Poussin - The Abduction of the Sabine Women (1634) |
The Rape of the Sabine Women is a historical scene depicted frequently in Western Art. I recently wrote about the mythology of the event as told by Livy and highlighted 15 of my favorite representations
here. Poussin painted the Abduction scene twice; his other version resides in the Louvre.
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| Detail - Nicolas Poussin - The Abduction of the Sabine Women (1634) |
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| Detail - Nicolas Poussin - The Abduction of the Sabine Women (1634) |
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| Detail - Nicolas Poussin - Saints Peter and John Healing the Sick (1655) |
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| Detail- Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) - Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuniga (1788) |
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| El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) - The Vision of St. John (1614) |
Although I do not like the style of this piece by Domenikos Theotokopoulos (known as El Greco), my eyes were drawn to it immediately. In a gallery of Mannerist and Baroque paintings of the early 17th century, the Vision of St. John appeared to be a complete anachronism. It has been said El Greco's style was closer to Picasso and Cezanne who came nearly 300 years after the painter than to those of his contemporaries like Caravaggio. So although I am not a fan of Expressionism, this work is pretty remarkable. El Greco truly was three centuries ahead of his time.
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| Courtyard inside the Museum |
American Paintings and Sculpture
The full collection can be viewed
here.
As already stated, one could probably spend two to three entire days exploring the museum and the collection of American Painting and Sculpture is one to which I would like to dedicate more time to viewing and learning. The Europeans are the undoubted masters but American Art is not given due recognition.
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| William Henry Rinehart - Latona and Her Children, Apollo and Diana (1874) |
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| John Trumbull - George Washington (1780) |
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| John Trumbull - The Sortie Made by the Garrison of Gibraltar (1789) |
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| Emanuel Leutze - Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851) |
This iconic
Washington Crossing the Delaware Leutze masterpiece is really breathtaking at a size of 21' x 12.5'. Leutze painted three copies of this scene: one which hung in the White House until 2015 when it went on display in the Minnesota Marine Art Museum and the original which was housed in Germany and was destroyed in a bombing raid in WWII.
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| Thomas Handoven - The Last Moments of John Brown (1884) |
