{"title":"Trade Stories: Chinese Export Embroideries in the Metropolitan Museum","authors":"Masako Yoshida","doi":"10.1086/680031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/680031","url":null,"abstract":"Three silk textiles embroidered with flower, bird, and animal motifs entered the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1929 as part of a single bequest. Nineteen years later, the museum received a fourth textile, with similar characteristics, from another donor. About this group of objects, which are clearly identifiable as Chinese export embroideries, little else is known for certain. The present article is a first attempt at establishing a history of these works, provisionally setting forth their dates and place of origin, the uses they possibly served, and the routes they may have taken on their centuries-long journey from China to New York. The formats and decorative compositions of the Metropolitan Museum’s embroideries are consistent with those of a specific class of Chinese textiles that were produced as bedcovers for the European market between 1550 and 1800. Similar pieces currently preserved in Japan and Europe attest to the fact that such textiles were exported to both East and west; none remain in China. Their popularity led to the production of imitations in countries along the trade routes and to the evolution of an international style that spread as far as the Andes. Thus, the Museum’s pieces are part of a larger category of textiles represented in collections around the world. Embroideries of this type feature at their center a peony encircled by a pair of facing phoenixes. The phoenixes, in turn, are surrounded by flowers, birds, and a variety of animals. Such compositions are found in two basic formats: vertical, with distinct top and bottom; and four-directional, with motifs radiating from the center. The backgrounds of these works are of two types also: in one, the background is covered entirely with gold-thread embroidery; in the other, the unadorned foundation fabric serves as the backdrop. The stylistic analysis presented in this article will focus exclusively on four-directional compositions with gold backgrounds. The three embroideries that came to the Metropolitan Museum in 1929 were bequeathed by Mrs. h. O. havemeyer; the fourth, bestowed in 1948, was a gift from Catherine D. wentworth. The havemeyer textiles were regarded initially as discrete objects, and each was assigned an accession number. Many years later, however, the Museum’s Textile Conservation Department discovered that the smallest of the three embroideries had been pieced together mostly with fragments from the other two, and conservators embarked on a project to detach the mismatched fragments and restore them to their original positions in the two larger embroideries (see Appendix Diagrams 1 – 3). As a result of this ongoing work, the number of the havemeyer textiles has effectively been reduced from three to two. (All that remains of the third havemeyer textile are two long, narrow strips; see Appendix Diagram 3.) These two embroideries will be referred to here as MMA I (Figure 1) and MMA II (Figure 2). Of the Metropolitan’s embroideries, only","PeriodicalId":42073,"journal":{"name":"METROPOLITAN MUSEUM JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/680031","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60341991","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ancient Sources for Tullio Lombardo’s Adam","authors":"V. Cafà","doi":"10.1086/680026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/680026","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42073,"journal":{"name":"METROPOLITAN MUSEUM JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/680026","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60341682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A New Analysis of Major Greek Sculptures in the Metropolitan Museum: Petrological and Stylistic","authors":"L. Lazzarini, C. Marconi","doi":"10.1086/680028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/680028","url":null,"abstract":"Interest in the provenance of ancient marbles used in Greek and Roman sculpture is long-standing, going back to the very foundation of the study of ancient art, Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s History of the Art of Antiquity, published in 1764. In Part 1 of this seminal text, the German scholar addresses the materials selected by Greek sculptors in two important passages. In the introductory chapter, which discusses the origin of art and the reasons for its diversity among peoples, Winckelmann proposes a line of development for ancient sculptors’ materials that begins with clay and gradually progresses to wood and ivory, and finally to stone and metal. In Chapter 4, on the art of the Greeks, section 4, devoted to the “Mechanical Part of Greek Sculpture,” he addresses first the materials in which Greek sculptors worked and then the manner of their workmanship. In the passage, Winckelmann begins — in keeping with the taste of his time — with marble, and he not only presents the relevant literary sources but also discusses the qualities of different kinds of marble, including texture, consistency, and color. He focuses on marble from the island of Paros but also mentions Thasian, Pentelic, and Carrara marble. He explores the correlation between the qualities of these marbles and their different workabilities and appearances, thus proposing a strong connection between the material and the aesthetic quality of ancient sculpture.1 After such a start, it would seem inevitable that the identification of the marbles used in antiquity would have been a constant concern of both historians of ancient art and archaeologists. However, it was not until more than one hundred years after Winckelmann that the German geologist Richard Lepsius developed the first scientifically correct approach, one that can unreservedly be defined as archaeometric in the strict sense of the term.2 Archaeometry is a rather new science, officially dating to the end of the 1950s when the University of Oxford’s Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art began publishing a bulletin for the purpose of “fostering the close integration between the physical sciences, archaeology, and art history.”3 The bulletin soon became Archaeome try, an international journal now published six times a year that reports on the applications of scientific disciplines, such as biology, chemistry, physics, geology, and informatics, to archaeology, architecture, and art. Among other topics, its contributors discuss methods for determining the age and authenticity of all kinds of artifacts, the nature of their materials, and their sources and manufacturing techniques. One important application of archaeometry concerns marbles.4 Technically, marbles are pure carbonatic (calcitic or dolomitic) rocks with a carbonatic content that is usually well in excess of 95 percent. These rocks are crystalline; they may be white or gray, more rarely black, red, or green; and they will have been produced by contac","PeriodicalId":42073,"journal":{"name":"METROPOLITAN MUSEUM JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/680028","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60341801","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Greek Inscription in a Portrait by Salvator Rosa","authors":"Michael Zellmann-Rohrer","doi":"10.1086/680032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/680032","url":null,"abstract":"In the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a painting most often identified as a self-portrait by Salvator Rosa (1615 – 1673), depicting a man holding a human skull (Figure 1). The identity of the sitter has been disputed,1 though the work can be securely set in the context of the friendship between Rosa and Giovanni Battista Ricciardi (1623 – 1686), owing to an inscription.2 In fact, three inscriptions appear in the composition, and one of them, composed in classical Greek, has previously been misinterpreted. Born in Arenella, near Naples, Rosa traveled to Rome as a young man. There, in addition to painting, from 1638 he received training in poetry and satire from the court poet Antonio Abate (d. 1697), becoming an adept himself.3 A few years later, while in Florence, Rosa first encountered Ricciardi, a future professor of philosophy, who would guide Rosa in that discipline, particularly its source texts from classical Greece and Rome, over the course of a long friendship.4 Ricciardi was a bibliophile, known for his ability to locate and acquire copies of classical and other texts of interest to the literary elite of Tuscany, and Rosa occasionally served as his agent in this enterprise. In 1651, Rosa acquired for Ricciardi in Rome three Greek texts: the Adversus mathematicos by Sextus Empiricus, the Bibliotheca by Photius, and the commentary on Homer by Eustathius of Thessalonike.5 In Florence, Ricciardi participated in the Accademia dei Percossi, which Rosa founded with Lorenzo Lippi (1606 – 1665) about 1643.6 The group included, among other intellectuals, the philologists and classical scholars Carlo Roberto Dati (1619 – 1676), Andrea Cavalcanti (1610 – 1672), and Valerio Chimentelli (1620 – 1668), who had contacts with major centers for the study of antiquity in Rome and at the University of Pisa.7 This milieu would certainly have provided a suitable setting for Rosa to become conversant in Greek and Roman literature and culture. Indeed, there is noticeable selfidentification with classical antiquity among the Percossi, as Rosa describes the villa of his friend Giulio Maffei (d. 1656) at Monterufoli as “the Garden of Hesperides” and a “little Parnassus,” and casts himself and his colleagues as Greek philosophers.8 Their banquets often concluded with orations, including one titled “Encomium of the Golden Age” by Evangelista Torricelli (1608 – 1647), a noted physicist and mathematician, which borrowed heavily from classical texts,9 and a poetic composition by Niccolò Simonelli (d. 1671), an important early patron of Rosa’s work, which praises Rosa as the “Demosthenes of painting.”10 Rosa’s own literary production, situated in this context, bears out his familiarity with classical works. His satires bristle with classical allusions from a wide range of genres, some rather obscure, including direct citations in the original Latin11 and broader textual reminiscences.12 These also appear in the letters Rosa wrote to Ricciardi,13 in whic","PeriodicalId":42073,"journal":{"name":"METROPOLITAN MUSEUM JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/680032","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60342061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Adam by Tullio Lombardo","authors":"L. Syson, V. Cafà","doi":"10.1086/680047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/680047","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42073,"journal":{"name":"METROPOLITAN MUSEUM JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/680047","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60342586","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
C. Riccardelli, Michael Morris, G. Wheeler, J. Soultanian, Lawrence Becker, Ronald Street
{"title":"The Treatment of Tullio Lombardo’s Adam: A New Approach to the Conservation of Monumental Marble Sculpture","authors":"C. Riccardelli, Michael Morris, G. Wheeler, J. Soultanian, Lawrence Becker, Ronald Street","doi":"10.1086/680027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/680027","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42073,"journal":{"name":"METROPOLITAN MUSEUM JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/680027","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60341735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hellenistic Etruscan Cremation Urns from Chiusi","authors":"Theresa Huntsman","doi":"10.1086/680029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/680029","url":null,"abstract":"The city of Chiusi, ancient Clusium in Latin, or Clevsin in Etruscan, lies about 105 miles north of Rome along major trade routes through inland Etruria. Once one of the twelve cities of Etruria and seat of the famous Etruscan king Lars Porsenna,1 Chiusi and its environs have been occupied continuously from the Bronze Age to the present day. Antiquarian interest and fortuitous discoveries by local farmers in the nineteenth century uncovered hundreds of burials — simple pit tombs to multigenerational chamber tombs — in the area. Excavation practices of the day led to the quick excavation and dispersal of archaeological materials to museums and private collections across Europe and the United States, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Objects from a single tomb were usually sold separately, and even if the original context was documented, the information often did not accompany artifacts, especially objects coming to the United States. In some cases, however, inscriptions in Etruscan or other distinguishing features on objects make it possible to determine their archaeological provenance and gain further insight into Etruscan funerary and artistic practices. An analysis of the forms and name inscriptions of a group of six cremation urns from Chiusi at the Metropolitan, never before the subject of a focused study, offers a new understanding of the urns’ manufacture and archaeological contexts as well as Etruscan family relationships and the role of burial containers in the Etruscan funerary environment. The Etruscans of Chiusi preferred to cremate their dead and deposited the ashes in a range of containers. Chiusi is most noted for its production of so-called terracotta “canopic” cremation urns with simple, ovoid bodies containing the cremated remains and with lids in the shape of human heads (Figure 1).2 This urn form “stood in” for the deceased in tombs of the Orientalizing period (seventh to sixth century B.C.) and was often placed on a high-backed chair or throne and arranged before an assemblage of grave goods related to banqueting. Over the course of the Archaic and Classical periods (sixth to fifth century B.C.), the canopic urn gave way to stone cinerary statues or relief-decorated, square cippi (boxes), but these monuments were generally very large, difficult to produce, and available to only a small, affluent portion of the population.3 Hellenistic Etruscan Cremation Urns from Chiusi","PeriodicalId":42073,"journal":{"name":"METROPOLITAN MUSEUM JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/680029","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60341866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Another Brother for Goya’s “Red Boy”: Agustín Esteve’s Portrait of Francisco Xavier Osorio, Conde de Trastámara","authors":"X. F. Salomon","doi":"10.1086/680034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/680034","url":null,"abstract":"The exhibition “Goya and the Altamira Family,” held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from April 22 to August 3, 2014, brought together for the first time four portraits by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes painted about 1787 – 88. For the occasion, the celebrated “Red Boy” in the Museum’s collection was displayed together with likenesses of his parents and two of his siblings in a gallery of the European Paintings Department. Goya’s portrait of the head of the family, Vicente Joaquín Osorio de Moscoso y Guzmán, conde de Altamira (Figure 1), was paid for on January 29, 1787, and was the first of the artist’s Altamira paintings.1 Commissioned by the Banco de San Carlos (renamed Banco de España after 1829), of which Altamira was a director, the portrait is still in the bank’s collection. In the succeeding two years, the count commissioned Goya to paint three portraits for the family’s palace on the calle de la Flor Alta in Madrid: the Metropolitan Museum’s full-length portrait of Altamira’s first wife, María Ignacia Álvarez de Toledo, with their infant daughter María Agustina (Figure 2), and their sons Vicente Isabel, conde de Trastámara (Figure 3), and Manuel, señor de Ginés (Figure 4), the “Red Boy.” Inventories of the Altamira collection reveal that family portraits by other artists hung in the palace as well. The postmortem inventory of the conde de Altamira, compiled between January 7 and February 8, 1817, lists a series of portraits of the count and his family, including an image of the count on horseback by Antonio Carnicero (1748 – 1814) and, in one room, “eight portraits of the family of the Count of Altamira.”2 A subsequent inventory, compiled on March 13 – 14, 1864, after the death of Vicente Pío Osorio de Moscoso y Ponce de León (the grandson of the conde de Altamira in Goya’s portrait [Figure 1]), lists in detail Goya’s portraits of the Altamira family along with those by a number of other painters.3 The equestrian portrait of the count by Carnicero was still in the palace, as was another portrait of him attributed in the inventory to Luis Egidio Meléndez (1716 – 1780).4 Two of the three Goya portraits — those of the countess with her daughter María Agustina (Figure 2) and the “Red Boy” (Figure 4) — are also listed, while for some unknown reason, the portrait of Vicente, conde de Trastámara (Figure 3), is not mentioned in the document.5 Another portrait by Goya, that of the architect Ventura Rodríguez, now in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, was also acquired by the Altamira family before 1864.6 The Altamiras owned a substantial group of family portraits by the Valencian painter Agustín Esteve y Marques (1753 – ca. 1820), who in the 1780s and 1790s collaborated with Goya, especially on portraits, and became a wellknown portraitist himself. According to early sources, he produced fourteen portraits for the family of the duke of Osuna and others for the dukes of Alba.7 Esteve must also have painted a significant number of portraits for the A","PeriodicalId":42073,"journal":{"name":"METROPOLITAN MUSEUM JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/680034","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60341769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Herakles Takes Aim: A Rare Attic Black-Figured Neck-Amphora Attributed to the Princeton Painter","authors":"M. B. Moore","doi":"10.1086/675312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/675312","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42073,"journal":{"name":"METROPOLITAN MUSEUM JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/675312","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60201230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sin and Redemption in the Hours of François I (1539–40) by the Master of François de Rohan","authors":"Yassana Croizat-Glazer","doi":"10.1086/675317","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/675317","url":null,"abstract":"In 2011, the department of European Sculpture and decorative Arts acquired a lavish book of hours made for the use of Rome for King François I (1494 – 1547). Of the manuscript’s ninety-three leaves, eighteen feature full-page miniatures by the Master of François de Rohan, who was active mainly in Paris between about 1525 and 1546. The humanistic script (an imitation of Roman script) is likely the work of Jean Mallard, a calligrapher and illuminator from Rouen who enjoyed royal patronage first in France, then in England.1 In light of the fact that virtually nothing remains of François I’s collection of personal prayer books, the Hours of François I constitutes a key addition to the Museum’s collection of works from the French Renaissance.2 The manuscript itself is remarkable for its sumptuous decoration and the unusual imagery of two illuminations, folios 67r and 89r (Figures 1, 2), which together raise important questions about François I’s attitude toward kingship and the struggles he faced in the tumultuous period during which the book was made.","PeriodicalId":42073,"journal":{"name":"METROPOLITAN MUSEUM JOURNAL","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/675317","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60201531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}