The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fifth Avenue, New York
18 November 2008-16 February 2009
Key moments in the lives of Italian men and women in the Renaissance were marked by celebrations carried out with the greatest possible degree of magnificence. Of these, betrothal, marriage, and the birth of a child were of the utmost significance. Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, on view this fall at the Metropolitan Museum, will offer a unique look at approximately 150 art objects and paintings, dating from around 1400 to 1600, that were created to celebrate love and marriage. It will include exquisite examples of maiolica and jewelry given as gifts to couples, marriage portraits and paintings that extolled sensual love and fertility, such as the Metropolitan's own enus and Cupid by the great Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto, and some of the rarest and most significant pieces of Renaissance glassware, cassone panels, birth trays, and drawings and prints of amorous subjects.
The exhibition is made possible by the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Additional support is provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.
The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.
Art and Love in Renaissance Italy will be divided into three sections: Celebrating Betrothal, Marriage and Childbirth, which will feature splendid wedding gifts such as maiolica decorated with narratives or portraits, rare Venetian glassware, rings (including one of the earliest known diamond wedding rings) and other jewelry, delicate gilded boxes, and costly painted cassoni, or bridal chests; Profane Love, which will focus on erotic, at times salacious, imagery treated in drawings, prints, and other objects created by some of the most celebrated artists of the time, including Parmigianino and Giulio Romano; and From Cassone to Poesia: Paintings of Love and Marriage, which will shift to nuptial portraits and paintings on themes of love that decorated bedchambers and private quarters. Here the poetic genius of Renaissance artists will be on display with some of the most beguiling and sensual works by Botticelli, Titian, Lorenzo Lotto, and their contemporaries that were produced for marriages and as gifts for lovers.
Art and Love in Renaissance Italy is organized at the Metropolitan Museum by Andrea Bayer, Curator in the Department of European Paintings. The Profane Love section of the exhibition is organized by Linda Wolk-Simon, Curator in the Museum's Department of Drawings and Prints.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue that will be available in the Metropolitan Museum's book shops.
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