Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, New York
Italy is a country of lovers – men who are unashamed of admiring women, and women who are happy to be admired. But this is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, Renaissance Italy produced some of the greatest love stories told and retold on paper, canvas, in plaster and in marble. Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Petrarch’s sonnets. Boccaccio’s love stories. Botticelli’s Venus. The women of Raphael and Titian. Italians love love, and Art and Love in Renaissance Italy showcases the romantic as well as the practical side of Italian love during the Renaissance.
The exhibit begins with the marriage contract. Whether love or money motivated the marriage, Italians of the Renaissance celebrated the union of two families and houses, immortalizing their wedding bonds with beautiful bowls and platters. Several examples in the exhibit show the combination of two families’ coat of arms (the Medicis figure prominently). Even a pharmacy jar used to hold medicinal ingredients capitalizes on the universal desire for love, depicting a couple courting on the front. However, artisans during the Renaissance also touched on the brutality of love – depicting unrequited love on one platter and a woman holding her lover at knife-point on another (a metaphor for the helplessness of lovers).
I was particularly taken with the wedding rings (including a lovely ring from a Jewish ceremony) and the yards of fabric, a pair of shoes from Venice, and an incredible carved cradle. The childbirth bowls were a lovely inclusion as well.
Take a few minutes to peruse the exhibit’s catalogue, too. There are several copies out for you to page through, and the information contained therein is invaluable. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of the childbirth bowls – they are of an uncertain function but may have been for serving special foods during a woman’s confinement – and da Vinci’s cross-section of a man and a woman copulating.
Personally, the best surprise was the inclusion of Giovanni di Ser Giovanni Guidi’s painting, The Adimari Cassone. This panel, held in the collections of the Academy in Florence, is one of my personal favorites, and I hadn’t dared to hope that it would be included, but I came through the passageway, and there it was! The Adimari Cassone depicts a marriage procession in Florence. The Baptistry and a charming loggia set the scene. There are clever little musicians at one end including two impish children dancing. The procession includes a woman wearing a fabulous peacock hat. And the entire scene celebrates a real marriage with real people in a real place – a new and glorious development in the Humanist’s Italy.
Art and Love in Renaissance Italy is open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City until February 16, 2009. A visit would make for a fantastic Valentine’s Day excursion!
Cost: $20 suggested donation to enter the museum
There are no additional fees for the special exhibit.
Can’t make it to New York? Check out the images on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website.
And the exhibit moves on to the Kimball Art Museum in Ft. Worth, Texas where it opens on March 15 and runs through June 14, 2009.
All images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website.