Giacobbe Giusti, MICHELANGELO: Pietà for Vittoria Colonna, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Pietà for Vittoria Colonna
Michelangelo – Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Giacobbe Giusti, MICHELANGELO: Pietà for Vittoria Colonna, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum | |
---|---|
Artist | Michelangelo Buonarroti |
Year | about 1538–44 |
Type | Black chalk on cardboard |
Dimensions | 28.9 cm × 18.9 cm (11.4 in × 7.4 in) |
Location | Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston |
The Pietà for Vittoria Colonna is a black chalk drawing on cardboard (28.9×18.9 cm) by Michelangelo Buonarroti, dated to about 1538–44 and kept at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.[1]
History
Michelangelo became acquainted with Vittoria Colonna around 1538.[2] Their lively friendship gained Michelangelo admission to her social circles, and he became acquainted with issues of church reform. For Colonna, Michelangelo executed several paintings in the fifth decade of the sixteenth century. All of them are now lost or of controversial attribution, but several sketches and copies by students and admirers of Michelangelo have been preserved.
Apart from a famous Crucifixion, Michelangelo’s most notable work for Vittoria Colonna is a Pietà, of which a remarkable drawing is exhibited at Boston. It is not certain that this work was painted by Michelangelo, but it is described by Ascanio Condivi. It has at any rate proved influential: There are several copies by students of lesser skill in Florence and Rome, a reworking by Ludovico Buti and an adaptation by Lavinia Fontana.[1]
In 2007, the Milanese restaurator and art historian Antonio Forcellino announced that an oil painting of the same subject had been discovered in a private home in Rochester, New York. The painting had come to the U.S. in 1883 and had hung over the fireplace of a middle-class family home until the 1970s. In a 2011 book, The Lost Michelangelos, Forcellino expresses the opinion that the painting is Michelangelo’s. This attribution is not yet widely shared. According to Kristina Herrmann Fiore, a curator at the Borghese Gallery in Rome, the painting’s underdrawing is conceivably by the hand of Michelangelo, whereas Alexander Nagel, a professor at New York University Institute of Fine Arts believes that the painting is merely a copy of a composition by Michelangelo.[3]
Description and style
The theme of the Pietà, so dear to the sculptor Michelangelo, is addressed in a highly emotional composition, as in the Crucifixion for Colonna. The dead Jesus is cradled between the grieving Mary’s legs, who raises her arms to heaven as two angels also raise Christ’s arms at right angles. Mary’s gesture balances the forceful vertical lines of Jesus’ body, which lies on a rock. Above the two stands a beam, the Cross, on which is inscribed, vertically, a quotation by Dante: Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa – « There they don’t think of how much blood it costs ».[1]
In this verse from canto 29 of the Paradiso, Beatrice deplores the lack of appreciation for the martyrs‘ sacrifices. The quote reflects Michelangelo’s and Colonna’s religious convictions. Both belonged to Roman groups that focused on achieving salvation by faith through prayerful contemplation of sacred history, as does their poetry of this period. « Michelangelo’s gift », according to James M. Saslow, « thus offered consoling testimony to their shared conviction that the savior’s tragic death is also a cause for joy, the climax of God’s divine comedy that offers each believing soul the hope of a happy ending. »[1]
Gallery of other versions
Bibliography
- Antonio Forcellino, The Lost Michelangelos, Blackwell Pub., 2011, ISBN 978-0-7456-5203-0
- Lutz Heusinger, Michelangelo, in I protagonisti dell’arte italiana, Scala Group, Firenze 2001. ISBN 88-8117-091-4
- James M. Saslow, « Pietà, » in Eye of the Beholder, ed. by Alan Chong et al. (Boston: ISGM and Beacon Press, 2003), p. 81.
References
- ^ Jump up to:a b c d Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. « Pietà ». Retrieved 29 May 2011.
- Jump up^ De Tolnay, Charles (1953). « Michelangelo’s Pieta Composition for Vittoria Colonna ». Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University. 12 (2): 44–62. doi:10.2307/3774312. JSTOR 3774312.
- Jump up^ Flynn, Kevin; Kennedy, Randy (26 May 2011). « The Pietà Behind the Couch ». New York Times. Retrieved 29 May 2011.
Giacobbe Giusti, MICHELANGELO: Pietà for Vittoria Colonna, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Gardner Museum viewed from the Fenwayparkway
(new wing is not visible at rear) |
|
Location within Boston
|
|
Former name | Fenway Court |
---|---|
Established | 1903 |
Location | 25 Evans Way Boston, MA 02115 |
Type | Art museum |
Accreditation | American Alliance of Museums |
Founder | Isabella Stewart Gardner |
Director | Peggy Fogelman |
Public transit access | |
Website | gardnermuseum.org |
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
|
|
Gardner Museum in 2012, original building at right
|
|
Built | 1896–1903 |
Architect | Willard T. Sears[1] |
NRHP reference # | 83000603[1] |
Added to NRHP | January 27, 1983 |
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (called Fenway Courtduring Isabella Stewart Gardner‘s lifetime) is a museum in the Fenway–Kenmore neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts near the Back Bay Fens. It houses an art collection of world importance, including significant examples of European, Asian, and American art, from paintings and sculpture to tapestries and decorative arts.
In 1990, thirteen of the museum’s works were stolen; the high-profile crime remains unsolved and the works have not been recovered.
History
The museum was opened in 1903 by Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924), an American art collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts. It is housed in a building designed to emulate a 15th-century Venetian palace, drawing particular inspiration from the Venetian Palazzo Barbaro.
Gardner began collecting seriously after she received a large inheritance from her father in 1891. Her purchase of Vermeer‘s The Concert at auction in Paris in 1892 was her first major acquisition. In 1894, Bernard Berenson offered his services in helping her acquire a Botticelli. With his help, Gardner became the first American to own a painting by the Renaissance master. Berenson helped acquire nearly 70 works of art for her collection.
After her husband John L. Gardner’s death in 1898, Isabella Gardner realized their shared dream of building a museum for their treasures. She purchased land in the marshy Fenway area of Boston, and hired architect Willard T. Sears to build a museum modeled on the Renaissance palaces of Venice. Gardner was deeply involved in every aspect of the design, leading Sears to quip that he was merely the structural engineer making Gardner’s design possible. After the construction of the building was complete, Gardner spent a year installing her collection in a way that evokes intimate responses to the art, mixing paintings, furniture, textiles and objects from different cultures and periods among well-known European paintings and sculpture. The gallery installations were very different than they appear today; the Room of Early Italian Paintings, for example, served as her Chinese Room until about 1914.
The museum opened on January 1, 1903 with a grand celebration featuring a performance by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a menu that included champagne and doughnuts. In 1909 the Museum of Fine Arts moved to its new home close by.
During Gardner’s lifetime, she welcomed artists, performers, and scholars to Fenway Court to draw inspiration from the rich collection and dazzling Venetian setting, including John Singer Sargent, Charles Martin Loeffler, and Ruth St. Denis, among others. Gardner also occasionally hosted artists’ exhibitions within Fenway Court, including one of Anna Coleman Ladd. Today, the museum’s contemporary artist-in-residence program, courtyard garden displays, concerts, and innovative education programs continue Isabella Gardner’s legacy.
When Gardner died in 1924, her will created an endowment of $1 million and outlined stipulations for the support of the museum, including the charge that her collection be permanently exhibited « for the education and enjoyment of the public forever » according to her aesthetic vision and intent.
Gardner appointed her secretary and the former librarian of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Morris Carter (1877–1965) as the museum’s first director. Carter catalogued the entire collection and wrote Gardner’s definitive biography, Isabella Stewart Gardner and Fenway Court. George L. Stout (1897–1978) was the second director. The father of modern conservation, Stout ensured the long-term preservation of the collection and historic structure. Rollin Van Nostrand Hadley (1927–1992) became the third director in 1964. Leaving with a mixed legacy in 1988, Hadley published several catalogues and articles about the collection during his tenure but also disposed of much of the museum’s Asian artwork in 1971. Anne Hawley was director from 1989 until 2015.[2]
The museum’s current director is Peggy Fogelman.
Design
Built to evoke a 15th-century Venetian palace, the museum itself provides an atmospheric setting for Gardner’s inventive creation. Gardner hired Willard T. Sears to design the building near the marshy Back Bay Fens to house her growing art collection.[3] Inside the museum, three floors of galleries surround a garden courtyard blooming with life in all seasons.
It is a common misconception that the building was brought to America from Venice and reconstructed.[4] It was built from the ground up in Boston out of new materials, incorporating numerous architectural fragments from European Gothic and Renaissance structures.
Antique elements are worked into the design of the turn-of-the-century building. Special tiles were custom designed for the floors, modern concrete was used for some of the structural elements, and antique capitals sit atop modern columns. The interior garden courtyard is covered by a glass roof, with steel support structure original to the building.
The Gardner Museum is much admired for the intimate atmosphere in which its works of art are displayed and for its flower-filled courtyard. Most of the art pieces are unlabeled, and the generally low lighting is more akin to a private house than a modern art museum.
In 2013, the museum was designated a Boston Landmark by the Boston Landmarks Commission.
Collection
Gardner collected and carefully displayed a collection of more than 7500 paintings, sculptures, furniture, textiles, silver, ceramics, 1500 rare books, and 7000 archival objects from ancient Rome, Medieval Europe, Renaissance Italy, Asia, the Islamic world, and 19th-century France and America. Among the artists represented in the galleries are Titian, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, Manet, Degas, Whistler and Sargent. The first Matisse to enter an American collection is housed in the Yellow Room.
Well-known artworks in the museum’s collection include Titian’s The Rape of Europa, John Singer Sargent’s El Jaleo and Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Fra Angelico’s Death and Assumption of the Virgin, Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait, Aged 23, Cellini’s Bindo Altoviti, Piero della Francesca’s Hercules, and Botticelli’s The Story of Lucretia.
The archives hold more than 7,000 letters from 1,000 correspondents, including Henry Adams, T.S. Eliot, Sarah Bernhardt, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, in addition to travel albums, dealer receipts, and guest books.
The galleries also contain Gardner’s little-known but extensive book collection that includes early-print editions and manuscripts of Dante, works by miniaturist Jean Bourdichon, incunables, and illuminated manuscripts.
Extension and preservation project
In 2002, after a two-year master planning process, the museum’s board of trustees determined that a new wing was necessary to preserve the historic building and to provide improved spaces for programs that continue Isabella Gardner’s legacy. In 2004, Pritzker Prize–winning architect Renzo Pianoand the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (Genoa, Italy) were selected to design the new wing. The design for the new wing is conceived as a respectful complement to the historic Museum building in scale, form, and materials.
The new expansion includes spaces for visitor services, concerts, special exhibitions, and education and landscape programs, furthering Isabella Gardner’s legacy in art, music, and horticulture while reducing 21st-century strain on the collection and galleries. The completion date was 2012,[5] and the project cost $118 million.[6]
Art theft of 1990
In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, a pair of thieves disguised as Boston police officers robbed the museum of thirteen works of art worth an estimated $500 million – the greatest known property theft in history.[7] Among the works was The Concert, one of only 34 known by Vermeer and thought to be the most valuable unrecovered painting at over $200 million.[when?] Also missing is The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt‘s only known seascape.
Despite efforts by the FBI, the works have not yet been recovered. The museum initially offered a reward of $5 million for information leading to recovery of the art, doubled in May 2017 to $10 million.[8]. Empty frames hang in the Dutch Room gallery as placeholders for the missing works. The selection of stolen works puzzled experts, as more valuable artworks were present in the museum.[9] According to the FBI, the stolen artwork was moved through the region and offered for sale in Philadelphiaduring the early 2000s. They believe the thieves were members of a criminal organization based in the mid-Atlantic and New England.
Current programs
The museum regularly produces scholarly exhibitions, lectures, family programs, and symposia that provide insights into the historic collection. Through the Artist-in-Residence program, artists in many disciplines are invited to live at and draw inspiration from the museum. The museum often hosts exhibitions of contemporary art, performances, and programs by those selected.
The Gardner’s concert series welcomes musicians and emerging artists to perform classical masterpieces, new music, and jazz on Sunday afternoons and select Thursday evenings. The musical program is also available through concert videos, audio recordings, and a free classical music podcast.
Reflecting Isabella Gardner’s passion for horticulture and garden design, the Gardner’s interior courtyard combines ever-changing horticultural displays with sculpture and architectural elements. The interplay between the courtyard and the museum galleries offers visitors a fresh view from almost every room, inviting connections between art and landscape. Programs like the Landscape Visions lecture series and special Ask the Gardner hours further engage visitors to embrace the art of landscape.
In keeping with Isabella Gardner’s enthusiasm for the Boston Red Sox baseball team, visitors wearing Red Sox paraphernalia receive discounted admission. Visitors named Isabella, or visiting on their birthday, enter free.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet%C3%A0_for_Vittoria_Colonna
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museum