Metropolitan Museum of Art | Storia del Museo

Le prime radici del Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) risalgono al 1866 a Parigi, Francia, quando un gruppo di americani decise di creare una "istituzione nazionale e galleria d'arte" per portare l'arte e l'educazione artistica al popolo americano.

L'avvocato John Jay, che propose l'idea, portò avanti rapidamente il progetto al suo ritorno negli Stati Uniti dalla Francia.

Sotto la presidenza di Jay, l'Union League Club di New York radunò leader civici, uomini d'affari, artisti, collezionisti d'arte e filantropi alla causa.

William Blake | A Poison Tree / Un albero avvelenato

I was angry with my friend;

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears:

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

William Blake | Songs of Experience: A Poison Tree, 1794 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean-Baptiste Greuze | Le uova rotte, 1756

Anche se questo dipinto venne eseguito a Roma e presenta ambiente e costumi italiani, la fonte del soggetto ritratto è un quadro olandese del Seicento dell’artista Frans van Mieris il Vecchio (1635-1681), Le uova rotte (Museo dell’Ermitage, San Pietroburgo), che l'artista francese Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) conosceva attraverso un’ incisione.

Le uova rotte simboleggiano la perdita della verginità.

Il bambino che cerca di ricomporre le uova rappresenta l’ignara innocenza dell’infanzia.

Il quadro suscitò una reazione favorevole quando fu esibito al Salon di Parigi nel 1757. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean Baptiste Greuze | Broken Eggs, 1756 (detail) | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ralph Albert Blakelock | A Waterfall, Moonlight, 1886

This painting was shown at the National Academy of Design exhibition in 1886 and is a fine example of Blakelock's mature painting style.

Although it features elements that are typical of the artist's style -generalized and silhouetted forms, glowing moonlight, and thick paint- it is particularly strong and subtle in comparison.

The foliage that frames the edge of the canvas echoes the irregular contours of the tree so much that the forms seem almost able to interlock.

The brushwork is varied with pigment loosely appled to create a richly colored surface, especially in the boundary between the light sky and the dark leaves. | Source: © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Claude Monet | The Manneporte (Etretat), 1883

Monet spent most of February 1883 at Étretat, a fishing village and resort on the Normandy coast.

He painted twenty views of the beach and the three extraordinary rock formations in the area: the Porte d'Aval, the Porte d'Amont, and the Manneporte.

The sunlight that strikes the Manneporte has a dematerializing effect that permitted the artist to interpret the cliff almost exclusively in terms of color and luminosity.

Claude Monet | The Manneporte (Etretat), 1883 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Claude Monet | The Stroller (Suzanne Hoschede), 1887

This painting of Suzanne Hoschedé in the meadows just south of Le Pressoir, Monet's home at Giverny, was probably made in the summer of 1887.

She became Monet's preferred model in the period after the death of his first wife, Camille, in 1879, and before 1890, when he gave up plein-air figure painting.

The model was the daughter of Alice Hoschedé, whom Monet married in 1892. | Source: © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Édouard Manet | Young Lady in 1866, 1866

Manet’s model, Victorine Meurent, had recently posed as the brazen nudes in Olympia and Luncheon on the Grass (both Musée d’Orsay, Paris).

Here, appearing relatively demure, she flaunts an intimate silk dressing gown.

Critics eyed the painting as a rejoinder to Courbet’s Woman with a Parrot and as indicative of Manet’s "current vice" of failing to "value a head more than a slipper".

George P. A. Healy | Euphemia White Van Rensselaer, 1842

Euphemia Van Rensselaer (1816-1888) was the daughter of Stephen Van Rensselaer and the sister of Alexander Van Rensselaer.

She was born in Rensselaerswyck, near Albany, New York, and inherited a portion of her father's vast estate in 1839.

This picture was painted in 1842, the year before her marriage to John Church Cruger, a prominent lawyer with whom she settled on Cruger's Island near Barrytown, New York.

George Peter Alexander Healy | Euphemia White Van Rensselaer, 1842 (detail) | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Luisa Roldàn | Baroque sculptor

Luisa Roldàn | The Entombment of Christ, 1700-1701 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Entombment is one of the two "jewel-like sculptures" Luisa Roldán gave to the newly installed King Philip V of Spain in 1701, petitioning him to appoint her sculptor to the royal court.

In the previous decade she had pioneered a genre of sculpture - powerfully conceived and exquisitely modelled and painted figural groups, made on a deliberately intimate scale - of which this is perhaps the finest.

Luisa Roldàn | The Entombment of Christ, 1700-1701 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sir Peter Lely | Study for a Portrait of a Woman, 1670

From: Metropolitan Museum of Art

This sketch provides a good example of Sir Peter Lely’s (Dutch-born English Baroque Era Painter, 1618-1680) working method, as one of the most successful portraitists in England in the second half of the seventeenth century.

Following the example of Van Dyck, Lely painted only the sitter’s head in his or her presence, sometimes laying in an outline for the pose and costume.

Eastman Johnson | At the Closing of the Day, 1878-80

Beginning in 1870 Eastman Johnson (American painter and co-founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, 1824-1906) produced a string of anecdotal narrative subjects depicting daily life on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts.

In the years after the Civil War, Johnson drew upon the visual character of the island and its inhabitants to portray everyday scenes which rank among the artist's most memorable paintings.

In an effort to find new and relevant subject matter, the painter found inspiration in the quiet whaling community of Nantucket. Johnson relished the island's simple way of life, its setting, and its population which offered models of distinctive appearance and character.

Ancient Buddhism and Buddhist Art

Buddha, Probably Amitabha Amituofo | Early 7th century | China | Metropolitan Museum of Art

The history of Buddhism spans from the 6th century BCE to the present. Buddhism arose in the eastern part of Ancient India, in and around the ancient Kingdom of Magadha (now in Bihar, India), and is based on the teachings of Siddhārtha Gautama.

The religion evolved as it spread from the northeastern region of the Indian subcontinent through Central, East, and Southeast Asia. At one time or another, it influenced most of the Asian continent.

The history of Buddhism is also characterized by the development of numerous movements, schisms, and schools, among them the Theravāda, Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna traditions, with contrasting periods of expansion and retreat.

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Why Study Art from the Past?

Art from the past holds clues to life in the past.

By looking at a work of art's symbolism, colors, and materials, we can learn about the culture that produced it.

For example, the two portraits above are full of symbolism referring to virtues of an ideal marriage during the fifteenth century.

Maestro delle Storie del Pane (Italian (Emilian), active late 15th century) | Portrait of a Man, possibly Matteo di Sebastiano di Bernardino Gozzadini and Portrait of a Woman, possibly Ginevra d'Antonio Lupari Gozzadini, 1494

Claude Monet | La terrasse à Sainte-Adresse, 1867

"The Garden at Sainte-Adresse" is a painting by the French impressionist painter Claude Monet.

The painting was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art after an auction sale at Christie's in December 1967, under the French title "La terrasse à Sainte-Adresse".

The painting was exhibited at the 4th Impressionist exhibition, Paris, April 10-May 11, 1879, as no. 157 under the title Jardin à Sainte-Adresse.

Claude Monet | Spring (Fruit Trees in Bloom) 1873

Claude Monet made this work in the vicinity of his home in Argenteuil, a village on the Seine northwest of Paris that was a favorite gathering place of the Impressionists.

Although the scene has previously been called Plum Blossoms and Apples Trees in Bloom, the type of tree cannot be determined from the flurry of white buds evoked by the artist.

Renoir | Figures on the Beach, 1890

Figures on the Beach
Artist: Auguste Renoir (French, Limoges 1841–1919 Cagnes-sur-Mer)
Date: 1890
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 20 3/4 x 25 1/4 in. (52.7 x 64.1 cm)
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
Accession Number:  1975.1.198
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 961

Camille Corot at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Camille Corot (1796-1875) was a leading figure in the Barbizon school🎨 of France in the mid-nineteenth century. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting and his vast output simultaneously references the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipates the plein-air innovations of Impressionism.

Gustave Courbet | Jo, La Belle Irlandaise, 1866

Gustave Courbet | Jo, the Beautiful Irishwoman | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The "beautiful Irishwoman" depicted in this painting is Joanna Hiffernan (born 1842/43), mistress and model of the artist James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)🎨, and perhaps subsequently Courbet’s lover.

Although dated 1866, the picture was likely undertaken in 1865, when the two men painted together at the French seaside resort of Trouville; Courbet wrote of "the beauty of a superb redhead whose portrait I have begun".

He would paint three repetitions with minor variations. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Henri Fantin-Latour | Self-Portrait, 1858

Henri Fantin-Latour | Self-Portrait, 1858 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

At the beginning of his career, between 1854 and 1861, Fantin-Latour executed a large number of self-portraits in chalk, charcoal, and oil.

This example reveals his fascination with the work of Rembrandt and Courbet, who both used broad, rich strokes of paint and depicted forms as if they were emerging from an enveloping darkness. | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Peter Paul Rubens | Study of Two Heads, 1609

Artist: Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish Baroque Era painter, 1577-1640)

Title: Study of Two Heads

Date: ca. 1609

Medium: oil on panel

Dimensions: Height: 69.9 cm (27.5 in); Width: 52.1 cm (20.5 in)

Current location: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Rubens painted studies of heads after live models and artistic sources, creating a cast of characters that served in turn as models for figures in religious and mythological works.