Early Christian and Medieval Art News
Thursday April 5, 2007
Venice, Vatican and Vernacular Text
By Stan Parchin
The Associated Press reported on February 2, 2007 that the 321-foot-high campanile or bell tower of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy will have its cracking foundations reinforced with titanium belts to prevent further expansion of the existing fissures. This project, expected to last 18 months, will cost $7.7 million (US).
The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas will be the sole host of Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art from November 18, 2007 through March 30, 2008. This special exhibition's works (frescoes, marble statues, sarcophagi, examples of metalwork and carved ivory, glassware and illuminated manuscripts), too delicate to tour, will come from major museums in Europe (especially those of the Vatican), North Africa and the United States.
Moscow, Russia's Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts opened Era of the Merovingians: Europe Without Borders on March 13, 2007; the show runs through May 13. More than 1200 intricately designed brooches, collars, pendants and small-scale statues, made of metal and stone, describe European art and culture in the Early Middle Ages. They were created during the reign of the Merovingians, the dynasty that ruled parts of modern-day France, Belgium, Germany and Austria from 482 to 751 A.D. Co-organized by Berlin's Museum for Pre- and Early History, the Pushkin Museum, St. Peterburg's State Hermitage Museum and Moscow's Historical Museum, these incredible medieval treasures will be on view at the Hermitage from June 19 to September 16, 2007.
Venice and the Islamic World: 828-1797 is currently on view at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art from March 27 through July 8, 2007. Previously on display at Paris' Institut du Monde Arabe (October 2, 2006-February 18, 2007), the special exhibition's final stop, recently revealed, will be Venice's Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace) from July 28 through November 25.
More than 60 museums, libraries and private collections worldwide have contributed nearly 200 works of art (carpets and other textiles, ceramics, gilded and enameled glassware, manuscripts and printed books, sculpture, paintings, arms and armor, drawings and prints, metalwork and furniture) to this exhibition. Together they describe the fascinating history of Venetian art and the Most Serene Republic's relationship to its Islamic neighbors, revealing its duplicitous role in politics for the sake of commerce. The show begins in 828 A.D. with the theft of St. Mark's relics from Alexandria, Egypt by two Venetian merchants and climaxes with the maritime city's fall to Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) in 1797. Unique to The Metropolitan Museum's presentation is Travels (ca. 1400), an oversized illustrated account in French of the trip to Asia by medieval Venetian merchant Marco Polo (1254-1342). This rare manuscript will be returned immediately to Oxford University's Bodleian Library when Venice and the Islamic World... closes in New York.
The Morgan Library & Museum's long-awaited special exhibition Apocalypse Then: Medieval Illuminations from the Morgan opened on March 23 and closes on June 17, 2007. The New Testament Book of Revelation is seen through the eyes of Spanish, French, Flemish and Russian manuscript illuminators. Numerous pages from The Morgan's famous Las Huegas Apocalypse (1220 A.D.) by the Spanish monk Beatus of Liébana, recently separated for facsimile reproduction, are on view.
The Cloisters is the United States' only museum dedicated to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages in Europe. This branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, located in Upper Manhattan, overlooks the majestic Hudson River. As part of its Building Preservation Project, this institution has upgraded its galleries' lighting, climate control and heating systems, thanks in large part to funding from the City of New York, The Alice Tully Foundation, Samuel H. Kress Foundation and other friends of The Cloisters. Most prominent among the museum's most recent innovations have been the Early Gothic Art Hall's complete rehabilitation and the installation of one dozen architectural elements from the twelfth-century A.D. Benedictine monastery of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, in storage for almost 70 years.
Image credits:
Ivory Plaque with Pilate Washing
His Hands, Christ Bearing the
Cross and Peter Denying Christ
Roman, ca. 420-30 A.D.
Ivory
H. 7.6 cm (3 in.), W. 9.8 cm (3 7/8 in.)
The Maskell Ivories
© The Trustees of the British Museum, London
Photograph provided by The Kimbell Art Museum
Cup with Mount
Cup: Probably Iran or Egypt, 9th-11 Century A.D.
Mount: Byzantine, 10th-11th Century A.D.
Blown glass with incised decoration; mount
in gilded silver with inlaid enamel, pearls,
semiprecious stones and glass
Cup: Diam. 13.1 cm (5 1/8 in.),
H. 7 cm (2 3/4 in.)
With mount: Diam. 13.5 cm (5 3/8 in.),
H. 18.5 cm (7 1/4 in.)
© Treasury of St. Mark's Basilica, Venice
Early Gothic Hall
The Cloisters
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
By Stan Parchin
The Associated Press reported on February 2, 2007 that the 321-foot-high campanile or bell tower of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy will have its cracking foundations reinforced with titanium belts to prevent further expansion of the existing fissures. This project, expected to last 18 months, will cost $7.7 million (US).
The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas will be the sole host of Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art from November 18, 2007 through March 30, 2008. This special exhibition's works (frescoes, marble statues, sarcophagi, examples of metalwork and carved ivory, glassware and illuminated manuscripts), too delicate to tour, will come from major museums in Europe (especially those of the Vatican), North Africa and the United States.
Moscow, Russia's Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts opened Era of the Merovingians: Europe Without Borders on March 13, 2007; the show runs through May 13. More than 1200 intricately designed brooches, collars, pendants and small-scale statues, made of metal and stone, describe European art and culture in the Early Middle Ages. They were created during the reign of the Merovingians, the dynasty that ruled parts of modern-day France, Belgium, Germany and Austria from 482 to 751 A.D. Co-organized by Berlin's Museum for Pre- and Early History, the Pushkin Museum, St. Peterburg's State Hermitage Museum and Moscow's Historical Museum, these incredible medieval treasures will be on view at the Hermitage from June 19 to September 16, 2007.
Venice and the Islamic World: 828-1797 is currently on view at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art from March 27 through July 8, 2007. Previously on display at Paris' Institut du Monde Arabe (October 2, 2006-February 18, 2007), the special exhibition's final stop, recently revealed, will be Venice's Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace) from July 28 through November 25.
More than 60 museums, libraries and private collections worldwide have contributed nearly 200 works of art (carpets and other textiles, ceramics, gilded and enameled glassware, manuscripts and printed books, sculpture, paintings, arms and armor, drawings and prints, metalwork and furniture) to this exhibition. Together they describe the fascinating history of Venetian art and the Most Serene Republic's relationship to its Islamic neighbors, revealing its duplicitous role in politics for the sake of commerce. The show begins in 828 A.D. with the theft of St. Mark's relics from Alexandria, Egypt by two Venetian merchants and climaxes with the maritime city's fall to Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) in 1797. Unique to The Metropolitan Museum's presentation is Travels (ca. 1400), an oversized illustrated account in French of the trip to Asia by medieval Venetian merchant Marco Polo (1254-1342). This rare manuscript will be returned immediately to Oxford University's Bodleian Library when Venice and the Islamic World... closes in New York.
The Morgan Library & Museum's long-awaited special exhibition Apocalypse Then: Medieval Illuminations from the Morgan opened on March 23 and closes on June 17, 2007. The New Testament Book of Revelation is seen through the eyes of Spanish, French, Flemish and Russian manuscript illuminators. Numerous pages from The Morgan's famous Las Huegas Apocalypse (1220 A.D.) by the Spanish monk Beatus of Liébana, recently separated for facsimile reproduction, are on view.
The Cloisters is the United States' only museum dedicated to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages in Europe. This branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, located in Upper Manhattan, overlooks the majestic Hudson River. As part of its Building Preservation Project, this institution has upgraded its galleries' lighting, climate control and heating systems, thanks in large part to funding from the City of New York, The Alice Tully Foundation, Samuel H. Kress Foundation and other friends of The Cloisters. Most prominent among the museum's most recent innovations have been the Early Gothic Art Hall's complete rehabilitation and the installation of one dozen architectural elements from the twelfth-century A.D. Benedictine monastery of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, in storage for almost 70 years.
Image credits:
Ivory Plaque with Pilate Washing
His Hands, Christ Bearing the
Cross and Peter Denying Christ
Roman, ca. 420-30 A.D.
Ivory
H. 7.6 cm (3 in.), W. 9.8 cm (3 7/8 in.)
The Maskell Ivories
© The Trustees of the British Museum, London
Photograph provided by The Kimbell Art Museum
Cup with Mount
Cup: Probably Iran or Egypt, 9th-11 Century A.D.
Mount: Byzantine, 10th-11th Century A.D.
Blown glass with incised decoration; mount
in gilded silver with inlaid enamel, pearls,
semiprecious stones and glass
Cup: Diam. 13.1 cm (5 1/8 in.),
H. 7 cm (2 3/4 in.)
With mount: Diam. 13.5 cm (5 3/8 in.),
H. 18.5 cm (7 1/4 in.)
© Treasury of St. Mark's Basilica, Venice
Early Gothic Hall
The Cloisters
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Comments
The Christian art exhibit at the Kimbell Art Museum has quite a few really nice pieces of art. But I believe it could have been handled better with the descriptors written by the curators.
They began the exhibit with watercolor paintings over photos of early Christian frescos, annoying in that I went to see the art of early Christians and not interpretations by watercolorists. Then they went to the effort to introduce the symbolism of the Sheppard in early Christian art and proceeded to continually refer to the staff healed by many of the subjects as wands, very distracting and wasted the connection between the Sheppard used in Christian Imagery and all of the old testament prefigurements of Christ. The Curators seemed clueless about why Christ was not depicted on the cross. Maybe……just maybe they were following the biblical stricture against depicting God in a graven image????
The art was great, the comments on the curators cards were ……interesting.