An extensive exhibit of Vermeer’s paintings will open in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam on February 10, 2023. There is a video presentation in English on the Museum website here.
Also of interest is Christopher Parker’s essay “Uncovering the Jesuit Influence on Vermeer, One of the Netherlands’ Greatest Painters” in America Magazine January 27, 2023.
The Wall Street Journal recently featured a report by J.S. Marcus, “A New Look at Germany’s Jewish Past.” The Jewish Museum Berlin, designed by the architect David Libeskind, has completed a redesign of its core exhibition. This is available for a “visit with the museum’s new app, available in German and English.” Visit https://www.jmberlin.de/en/app to learn more and view the museum.
The life of the great Jewish political thinker, Hannah Arendt, is featured in this museum and also in a temporary exhibit, “Hannah Arendt and the Twentieth Century” in Berlin’s German Historical Museum until October 18.
The five hundredth anniversary of Raphael’s death is the occasion in Rome for a major exhibit of his work as painter and architect. In The Wall Street Journal, Ms. Cammy Brothers offers “Rafaello 1483-1520’ Review: A Renaissance Reappraisal.” She asks why Raphael does not excite the interest that today is shown to Leonardo and Michelangelo? “Yet he was a painter and architect of tremendous virtuosity and energy, wide-ranging in his talents and capable of absorbing and transforming the latest stylistic innovations.”
The exhibit “Raffaello 1483-1520” in Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale will end on August 30. Unfortunately, the present restrictions on travel will limit the number of people who can attend. However, the website of the exhibit offers “A Walk in the Exhibition” in English (12 minutes) as well as “The film of the exhibition ‘Raffaello 1520-1483’” in Italian with English subtitles.
The Assumption of the Virgin, 1577–79 by El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos), part of the exhibit, “El Greco: Ambition and Defiance,” at Art Institute of Chicago.
From time to time the museums and art galleries of many countries share their treasures along with loans that offer a unique perspective on given artists and themes. The celebration of Jan Van Eyck and the Ghent Altarpiece was noted in previous blog posts here and here. The terrible threat of the corona virus has cast a dismal shadow over so many lives, and we pray for all the families who have lost loved ones.
The New York Times published the essay by Sophie Haigney, “When the Virus Came, Some Museum Curators Lost Years of Work,” and The Wall Street Journal drew attention to the marvels of technology whereby “videos and documentaries offer an enlightened alternative.” In “The Staying Inside Guide: Opening Windows Onto Closed Exhibitions,” Lance Esplund draws attention to the following exhibits that may be of interest:
As we experience an extended quiet time for contemplation of the mysteries of life, this can be supplemented by exploration of the ways artists share their vision.
The Flemish artist Jan Van Eyck (circa 1390-1441) is celebrated in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium, with an exhibit “Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution” until April 30, 2020. The Wall Street Journal features an essay, “’An Optical Revolution’: Truer than Life,” by Judith Dobrzynski. She notes that the Ghent altarpiece, with the central panel still in restoration, remains in the Saint Bavo Cathedral nearby. “The restoration of the main panel revealed, among other things, the original human-like facial features of the mystical Lamb of God, particularly his eyes…”
One may consult the large book by Fabrici Hadjadj, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb: The Ghent Altarpiece, Painted by Jan and Hubert Van Eyck (New York: Magnificat, 2015), for a careful study of this multi-faceted painting.
On the Museum’s website the description of the exhibit is limited. See www.mskgent.be/en/exhibitions/van-eyck.
However we may also enjoy zoomable images at closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be/ and at the Van Eyck page of the Google Art project at artsandculture.google.com/entity/m0ck2w.
Saint Rosalie Interceding for the Plague-stricken of Palermo by Anthony van Dyck / Public domain
The Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art (Oxford University Press, 1996) by Peter and Linda Murray has an entry, “Plague Saints,” of whom there are 19. They mention Saints Roch (Rocco), Sebastian, Cosmas and Damian, Anthony Abbot and Charles Borromeo.
In 1624, Anthony van Dyck painted St. Rosalia while he was quarantined in Palermo, Sicily. One of these paintings is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and Jason Farago recently published this essay about it in The New York Times on March 26, 2020: “The Saint Who Stopped an Epidemic Is on Lockdown at the Met.”
Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution
Museum of Fine Arts Ghent (MSK)
February 1 – April 30, 2020
Hubert (died 1426) and Jan (1390?-1441) van Eyck created the wonderful paintings whose centerpiece is “The Adoration of the Lamb,” completed in 1432. Peter and Linda Murray offer a description of this central panel as follows:
In the NT the vital words are those of the Baptist (John 1:29, 36), when he recognizes Jesus as the Christ: ‘Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.’ These are the words of the AGNUS DEI, said daily in the Mass, always with the invocation ‘have mercy on us, give us peace’. In Rev. (Apoc) 5:6, 12; 12:11; and 22:1, the stress is on salvation emanating from the Lamb, since amid the Beasts and the Elders ‘stood the Lamb as if it had been slaughtered’ and ‘the river of water of life flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb’. This is the theme of van Eyck’s Adoration of the Lamb, where the pilgrims approach the altar on which stands the Lamb with blood flowing from his breast into a chalice. (Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art (Oxford University Press, 1996) p. 388)
The painstaking work of restoration of the panels began in 2012; this is described in “Realism and Revelation” in The Wall Street Journal, from which I quote:
A few weeks ago, the most recent phase of the restoration was unveiled, including the large front panel showing a bleeding lamb on an altar, surrounded by Christian martyrs, Jewish prophets and pagan writers. The panel—from which the altarpiece takes an often-used title, “The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb”—has been transformed by its cleaning, with the lamb’s face revealed to have an intelligent, nearly human expressiveness.
The Ghent Museum of Fine Arts will have an exhibit, “Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution,” from February 1, 2020. The Museum’s website offers an introduction to this masterpiece of the Belgian Cathedral of San Bavo.
The paintings and sculptures of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were shared widely when woodcuts or engravings reproduced these forms of art. In the Wall Street Journal, Barrymore Laurence Scherer presents an exhibit, “The Renaissance of Etching” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until January 20, 2020. His essay, “Outlining a Revolutionary Technique,” describes the advance: “But around 1500 printmaking itself was revolutionized when the technique of etching metal- primarily to decorate armor- was adapted to printing images on paper.”
The Met’s website of the exhibit allows us to explore the many Biblical scenes at leisure.
The work of Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) and his colleagues provides a delightful background for the celebration of Christian worship in many American Episcopal and Protestant churches from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Richard H. Driehaus Museum in Chicago offers an exhibit of these windows, “Eternal Light: The Sacred Stained-Glass Windows of Louis Comfort Tiffany,” until March 8, 2020.
The Metropolitan Museum Cloisters in New York City has an exhibit “The Colmar Treasure: A Medieval Jewish Legacy” until January 12, 2020. See www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/colmar-treasure-medieval-jewish-legacy.
The Jewish Week has a special report by Diane Cole, which you can read at jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/jewels-give-voice-to-a-lost-community/. In The Wall Street Journal, Susan Delson described Hidden Treasures from the Middle Ages with a reproduction of a page from a 14th century Jewish prayer book. The major collection of hidden jewels and coins was discovered in 1863. In addition, “research in the Colmar municipal library recently yielded another hidden treasure: fragments of Hebrew manuscripts that were later incorporated into the bindings of other books.” Several of these pages are among the pictures on the Cloisters’ website.
As we strive to promote understanding and harmony between Jews and their neighbors today, we appreciate the poignant reminders of the past and its burdens of persecution and suffering. May the principle of the Golden Rule be effective for a better future!