Tag: Raphael

Museum Exhibitions

Raphael’s innovations and influence

Contributed by Margarett McCann / The sophisticated visual storytelling of Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520) is emphasized in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Raphael: Sublime Poetry. Figure and architectural drawings, collaborations in printmaking, tapestry, and a quarter of his painting oeuvre are accompanied by precedents he imitated and peers whose progress he surpassed. Portrait of a Young Woman with a Unicorn shows Raphael’s seamless meld of real and ideal, solid and delicate, old and new. Gothic simplicity, medieval symbolism, and Flemish detail elegantly cohere with luminous chiaroscuro, perspective, and neoclassical plasticity.

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Museum Exhibitions

New Spain’s inventive painters

Contributed by David Carrier / When the Metropolitan Museum of Art recently rehung its permanent European collection, the galleries devoted to Spanish art included an abundant selection of work from “New Spain,” as the vast Spanish empire was known during the colonial period. From 1521 to 1821, its territory included, among much more, what is now Mexico, Central America, and the US Southwest. Much of the art consisted of sacred baroque painting – arguably the first truly international art style. “Saints & Santos: Picturing the Holy in New Spain,” on view at the New Mexico Museum of Art, does it justice.

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