Tag: met visit

The Met Museum

First off, the Met museum is incredibly huge and I really liked the display of artwork inside. Usually, I get bored of museums but the way the Met is set up and constructed made it hard for me to get bored of it. Another thing I liked is that it makes you feel as if you’re apart of the time period that you’re looking at.

I’m going to be comparing the renaissance artwork, Virgin and Child with Four Angels,Virgin and Child with Four Angels, Gerard David (Netherlandish, Oudewater ca. 1455–1523 Bruges), Oil on wood and the Baroque artwork, Virgin and Child.Virgin and Child, Bartolomé Estebán Murillo (Spanish, Seville 1617–1682 Seville), Oil on canvas

I chose these two because they seemed the most similar in style but they both differ in small ways. First off, the timings of production of both paintings are different. If a painting was made in the 15th to 16th century then it was a renaissance artwork. If a painting is made during the late 16th to 17th century then it was a baroque artwork. Both Renaissance and baroque emphasize religion and can put a lot of importance on women. Both artworks I chose is based on a virgin woman. Another difference is that Renaissance artworks did not completely depict human emotion, while Baroque art focused more on showing them.
As you can see, the Virgin and Child with Four Angels painting give more emphasis to religion with the addition of angels while the Virgin and Child painting is more simple and gives importance to the main feature of the painting.

MET Visit

My experience at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was different from the Brooklyn Museum. Just by walking up to the large building was an eye-opener. The inside was widely spaced and was very busy indicating it is a popular museum. The Museum is split up based on Geographically designated collections which I thought was easier to look at the art. When looking at the art on display you can see that Renaissance and the Baroque are vastly different. Although from the two painting I choose to use look identical for a few reasons: women are the main focus of the painting and it looks like a common domestic scene. If you look closely you can spot the differences. For starters, if you look at the painting of “Woman with a Water Jug” by Johannes Vermeer you see the subtlety of the light coming from the window on her headdress and under her arm which is one characteristic of Baroque art. Another characteristic is that the painting is “unstable,” it is a specific moment in time. The lady is picking up a pitcher, putting it down, and opening a window. She is caught in between the two movements. Also notice how she is ruining the balance and stability of the environment because everything is rectangular: the window, the map behind her, and the table and she is in between all of these objects. Now when looking at a renaissance painting, “The Rest on the Flight into Egypt” by a follower of Massys is more stable and looks serene. There are horizontal and verticals like the tree and the baby which are straight unlike the squares. The painting looks calm. It does not look like a transition or a specific moment of time. So even though at first glance these paintings seem similar they are actually from different time periods and areas and are seen to be vastly different based on that.

Met Visit

I took my visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday December 2nd.  Due to the fact it was the weekend and during the beginning of the holiday season, it was crowded with locals and tourists alike.  Despite that, it was easy to notice that the Met is a work of art in itself both inside and outside.  I visited with someone who had an art assignment to complete from a different class.  Within the museum some of my favorite exhibits were the ones that focus on East Asian cultures such as “Children to Immortals” and “Japanese Arms and Armor from the Collection of Etsuko and John Morris”.  I also liked the Ancient Egyptian exhibit focusing on the afterlife.

Within the Renaissance exhibit were many paintings of religious imagery and iconography.  Many images were filled with the depiction of Mary and Jesus, representative of the influence of the Catholic Church on Europe.  This religious imagery was less realistic than that of the Baroque Era.  It was filled with brighter tones, colors and designs representing royalty.  Its symbolic imagery such as halos and thrones represented the deeper meaning behind certain religious stories.  Renaissance paintings for the most part favored more of a symbolic approach instead of a realistic one when it came to religious paintings, ignoring the move toward realism.

By the Baroque Era, the move toward realism had taken over even the religious paintings of Europe.  As contrasted below, the Baroque Era favored a darker, more realistic color scheme as well as more realistic depictions of people.  It placed its symbolism on the lines of symmetry between the subjects of the artwork. The Baroque Era’s realism also led to less of an emphasis on religious artwork. The difference between these two eras are shown in “Merry Company on a Terrace” by Jan Steen (1670) above and “Saints and Scenes from the Life of the Virgin” by Master of Monte Oliveto (1320) below.