Victoria & Albert Museum Treasures
Medieval & Renaissance Works at The Metropolitan Museum: A Preview
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is hosting "Medieval and Renaissance Treasures from the Victoria and Albert Museum" from May 20 to August 17, 2008.
While London's Victoria and Albert Museum prepares 10 new three-level galleries for medieval and Renaissance art, the prestigious institution has sent abroad 35 mostly small-scale masterpieces. Medieval and Renaissance Treasures from the Victoria and Albert Museum is on display at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 20 to August 17, 2008. The splendid exhibition travels next to Atlanta, Georgia's High Museum of Art (September 13, 2008-January 4, 2009) and Sheffield, England's Millennium Galleries (January 29-May 24, 2009).
Medieval and Renaissance Treasures... includes rarely lent religious and secular sculptures in bronze, ceramic, glass, ivory and wood. They range in date from the Late Roman Empire (ca. 300) to about 1600. The show's irresistible centerpiece is the Codex Forster I (1487-1490 and 1505), profound illustrated notebooks by Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) penned in the genius' elusive mirror-writing style.
The Symmachi Panel
The precious Late Antique Symmachi Panel (ca. 400) was carved from elephant ivory. One leaf of a diptych or two-panel composition, it was fastened to its companion piece now in Paris' Cluny Museum. Latin inscriptions on top of both works refer to the aristocratic Roman Symmachi and Nicomachi families, suggesting their alliance or perhaps a marriage. Their scenes may also commemorate women from these patrician households having become priestesses in the cults of Bacchus, Ceres, Cybele and Jupiter, popular through the 4th Century A.D.
The V&A's panel depicts a pagan priestess under Jupiter's sacred oak tree. Around her head is an ivy garland associated with Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and revelry. Attended by a small child, she's about to sprinkle incense on a fiery altar. The work is derived stylistically from an earlier Greek prototype, indicative of the elite patrons' taste in antique art. Its pagan subject matter reflects the family's conscious resistance to Christianity after it became the Roman Empire's state religion in 380.
St. Nicholas Crozier
An ivory work most probably from Winchester, England, the St. Nicholas Crozier (1150-1170), reminiscent of a shepherd's crook in shape, was carried by a medieval bishop or abbot as a sign of spiritual authority. Its intricate carvings depict the Nativity or birth of Christ on one side and three scenes from the life of St. Nicholas on the other. The Late Roman Bishop of Myra in Lycia (Asia Minor), Nicholas became legendary for rescuing three girls from a dissolute life of prostitution by offering coins to them.
Figure of the Crucified Christ
Despite its diminutive size, the ivory Crucifed Christ (ca. 1300) by Italian sculptor, painter and architect Giovanni Pisano (ca. 1250-after 1314) is imbued with a monumental sense of sorrow. Visible traces of pigment on the sculpture's surface are vestigial reminders of the work's original polychromed state. Comparing the figure stylistically with other wood and marble works by the artist, including a prophet's head from Siena Cathedral's façade in the V&A's collection, helped distinguished art historian Sir John Pope-Hennessy (1913-1994) firmly attribute the Crucified Christ to Giovanni Pisano in 1965.
Donatello's Winged Putto
The cast bronze Winged Putto with Fantastic Fish (ca. 1435-1440) by Florentine master sculptor Donatello (ca. 1386-1466) represents a naked child with outstreched wings, a recurring antique motif in Italian Renaissance art. He stands upon a turtoise, emblematic of the powerful Medici family. Part of a decorative wall fountain for one of their villas, the statue originally held a whirligig. The toy would have spun around when a stream of water emitted from the figure's penis struck it, an enduring source of convivial amusement for Donatello's courtly patrons.
Stained Glass
During the Late Middle Ages, stained glass' subject matter included secular as well as religious themes. Attributed to Lukas Zeiner (act. ca. 1480-1510), Wild Man and Woman Supporting the Arms of Kyburg (ca. 1490) is an eloquently executed pane of both stained and painted glass. The Zurich artist's hirsute figures, their iconography deeply rooted in late-medieval traditions of imaginary monstrous races, were here put to a heraldic use. Embracing the municipal shield of Kyburg, the hairy couple embodies strength and freedom, civic virtues espoused by the Swiss on the eve of the Protestant Reformation.
Medieval and Renaissance Treasures from the Victoria and Albert Museum affords visitors the opportunity to explore the history of Western art and civilization through works of phenomenal craftsmanship from the London museum's collection.
Sources:
- Williamson, Paul. Medieval & Renaissance Treasures from the V&A (exh. cat.). London: V&A Publications, 2007.
- Zuffi, Stefano. Saints in Art. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002, 282-287.
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