A New Look at Old Masters

A New Look at Old Masters is part of the European Paintings Skylights Project and is a prelude to the final, expansive re-installation of the European Paintings galleries that will take place after the project is completed, reimagining the European Painting Galleries, from Giotto to Goya. The exhibition explores a variety of themes in The Met's collection of European painting and sets out to “create new dialogues among the works” as well as to include more sculpture. Visitors are encouraged to think about, for example, the relationship between Velázquez and Caravaggio, with the placement side by side of the former’s The Supper at Emmaus (1622–23) and Caravaggio’s The Denial of Saint Peter (1610). This is indeed a huge question, given that Veláquez visisted Rome for the first time in 1629 and, in the early 1620s is likely to have known Caravaggio’s work only through the copies and the work of artists in Spain such as Juan Bautista Maíno who visited Rome in the early 1600s. In another gallery we see the different approaches to painting the human head in early Renaissance Italy and Flanders, with a comparison between Memling’s portraits of Tomasso and Maria Portinari and Antonello da Messina’s Christ Crowned with Thorns. A gallery dedicated to art by women features spectacular works by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard and Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. There are also references to race and slavery with texts in the Renaissance galleries about enslaved Africans in 15th-century Antwerp, Belgium, and Florence. As one critic points out, the Met will need to do much more both on the contribution of female artists and race, slavery and imperialism, but “it at least starts a conversation”. This conversation has also started on the issue of ‘de-centring’ art history, as discussed in our forthcoming podcast with Met curators Griffin Mann and Andrea Achi.

The reinstallation project has been launched during the Met’s 150th anniversary year which has also seen exhibitions like Making the Met and the commission of mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People), two large canvases by Cree artist Kent Monkman for its Great Hall.