Displaying items by tag: 15th century

Amid Syria fears, Italy’s culture ministry in Rome announced that it will delay its loan of a famous 15^th-century painting by Sandro Botticelli to Israel because the timing is “not appropriate.” The Renaissance masterpiece The Annunciation of San Martino alla Scala was supposed to be sent to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem for inclusion in an exhibition opening on September 17, 2013.

The culture ministry said that it would send another painting of equal cultural and artistic content. The Uffizi Gallery organized the loan as part of celebrations for Israel’s 65^th anniversary.

The Annunciation is a large fresco that was originally painted on a hospital wall in Florence. It was removed in 1920 and transferred to the Uffizi, where it underwent restoration.

An American tourist broke a finger off of a 600-year-old statue housed in Florence’s Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, which boasts a significant sculpture collection dating from the Renaissance and medieval periods. The damaged statue, which is thought to depict the Virgin Mary and dates from either the 14^th or 15^th century, is part of a work titled Annunciazione. The sculpture is believed to be by the Florentine sculptor Giovanni d’Ambrogio.

The tourist, a 55-year-old man from Missouri, allegedly snapped off the right pinky finger of the statue while attempting to measure it. While the incident appears to have been an accident, Italian officials questioned the American and will determine what action to take. It is unclear how much it will cost to fix the finger, which was not original to the work and was added to the sculpture at some point after its completion.

Tim Verdun, the director of the museum, said that “in a globalized world like ours, the fundamental rules for visiting a museum have been forgotten, that is: Do not touch the works.”

Germany’s Staatsgalerie Stuttgart museum returned a 15^th century Renaissance painting stolen by Nazis during World War II to the estate of a Jewish art dealer. The museum acquired Virgin and Child, which is attributed to the Master of Flémalle (1375-1444) who is identified by historians as Robert Campin, in 1948.

The painting once belonged to Max Stern (1904-1987) who lost over 400 paintings to the Nazi regime during a forced sale in 1937. After Jews were banned from selling art in Nazi-occupied Europe, Stern shuttered his Dusseldorf gallery and escaped to London in December of the same year. Before settling in Montreal, Stern sold even more paintings, including Virgin and Child, in order to buy a German exit visa for his mother. Stern went on to purchase the Dominion Gallery of Fine Arts and established himself as one of Canada’s most important art dealers and collectors.

Upon his death in 1987, Stern donated a portion of his estate to Concordia and McGill Universities in Montreal as well as the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. For the past ten years Concordia has been working to recover the hundreds of paintings Stern lost at the hands of the Nazis. The initiative, known as the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, has facilitated the return of 9 works originally belonging to Stern; Virgin and Child is the 10^th and the only work to be returned from a German museum thus far.

A ceremony was held on Tuesday, March 5, 2013 at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin to celebrate the painting’s return.  

The Cloisters museum and gardens, a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art located in northern Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park, will celebrate its 75^th anniversary this year. Assembled from architectural elements, both domestic and religious, that date from the 12^th through the 15^th century, the Cloisters houses approximately 3,000 works of art from medieval Europe.

To commemorate its 75^th year, the Cloisters has a number of celebratory exhibitions planned. Search for the Unicorn: An Exhibition in Honor of the Cloisters’ 75^th Anniversary will present the Unicorn Tapestries (1495-1505), a series of seven tapestries, which were a gifted to the museum by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. when the Cloisters opened in 1938. The Tapestries are the museum’s best-known masterpieces, but their history and meaning remain mysterious. The Unicorn Tapestries will be exhibited alongside approximately 40 works from the Metropolitan, sister institutions, and private collections. Search for the Unicorn will be on view from May 15-August 18, 2013.

In September, the Cloisters will mount an installation by Janet Cardiff (b. 1957). The Forty Part Motet (2001) is comprised of 40 speakers, each playing the sound of one singer in a 40-voice choral performing “Spem in alium numquam habui” (circa 1573) by the Tudor composer Thomas Tallis (circa 1505-1585). The installation will play on a loop in the Cloister’s Fuentidueña Chapel through December 8, 2013. The Forty Part Motet is the first piece of contemporary art to be featured at the Cloisters.

The Cloisters will wrap up its anniversary celebrations with the exhibition of six near life-size stained glass windows on loan from England’s historic Canterbury Cathedral. It will be the first time the panels have left the cathedral since their creation in 1178-80. Current repairs to the cathedral’s stonework required the removal of the windows, which have recently been conserved. The stained-glass windows that will be on view at the Cloisters feature six figures from an original cycle of 86 ancestors of Christ, the most comprehensive stained-glass cycle known in art history. The Romanesque masterpieces will be on view from March through May 2014.

Built in the 1930s in northern Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park on land donated by John D. Rockefeller Jr., The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a sight to be seen. Assembled from architectural elements dating from the 12^th through 15^th century, The Cloisters, which includes landscaped gardens, features a collection of nearly 3,000 works of art from medieval Europe.

Besides an impressive collection and scenic gardens, The Cloisters boasts a picturesque view of the Palisades, a line of steep cliffs that run along the lower Hudson River. Rockefeller’s grandson, Larry, is teaming up with the Met, to preserve the vista, which risks being obscured by LG Electronics’ new corporate headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

The plans for the new LG location have the building stretching upward 143 feet, standing several stories above the tree line almost directly across the Hudson River from the Cloisters. Rockefeller, who has met with LG officials to discuss altering the building’s plans, is not alone in his concerns. A number of environmental groups have also filed lawsuits asking the company to reduce the new headquarters’ height. The Met has also written letters pleading with LG as well as a judge handling one of the environmental cases.  

Designed by architecture giant HOK, LG will begin construction on 27 acres this year. The project is expected to conclude by 2016.

Los Angeles’ J. Paul Getty Museum purchased a Flemish illuminated manuscript at Sotheby’s for $6.2 million on Wednesday, December 5. The Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies by Lieven van Lathem (1430-1493) consists of eight painted half-page miniatures and 44 historiated initials. Lathem is renowned for his paintings of secular scenes during the Flemish high Renaissance of manuscript illumination. The Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies is considered his finest work from the period.

The major acquisition adds to the Getty’s already phenomenal collection of 15^th century illuminated manuscripts, which includes Lathem’s only documented manuscript, The Prayer Book of Charles the Bold. Acquired in 1989, Prayer Book serves as the main reference for all other Lathem attributions. The purchase of the Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies joins two of the artist’s defining works in one collection – a remarkable feat.

Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies tells the story of the curious adventures of a nobleman from the family of Trazegnies, whose seat was in Hainaut (present-day Belgium). The tale mixes genres including travelogue, romance, and epic and follows the protagonist, Gillion, on a journey to Egypt, where he comes a bigamist and dies in battle as a hero.

The illumination had been on loan for the Getty’s 2003 landmark exhibition, Illuminating the Renaissance.