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Kimbell Art Museum

Art and Love in Renaissance Italy

March 15–June 14, 2009

Biagio d’Antonio
The Betrothal of Jason and Medea, 1487
Tempera on wood, 32 5/8 x 64 3/8 in.
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris

The Kimbell Art Museum announces Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, a fascinating exploration of art objects made to celebrate milestones in the lives of men and women in Renaissance Italy—betrothal, marriage, and the birth of a child. It will be on view from March 15 to June 14, 2009. Jointly organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Kimbell (its exclusive venues), this exhibition is curated by Andrea Bayer, a curator in the department of European paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Nancy E. Edwards, curator of European art and head of academic services at the Kimbell Art Museum.

Art and Love in Renaissance Italy includes approximately 150 paintings dating from 1400 to 1600 that were created to celebrate love and marriage. Among these works are marriage portraits and paintings that extol sensual love and fertility, exquisite examples of jewelry and maiolica (tin-glazed ceramic) given as gifts to couples, 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 will be divided into three thematic sections. The first, Celebrating Betrothal, Marriage, and Childbirth, will feature splendid wedding gifts. For wealthy families in cities such as Florence, Venice, and Milan, the best marriage depended on a sizable dowry provided by the bride’s family—not only money and property, but a variety of goods for the bride’s new home. The lavish wedding celebrations of the period were marked by extravagant 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 vividly painted cassoni, or bridal chests, which would be filled with costly linens and clothing. Likewise, the safe birth of a child was celebrated and commemorated with the production of finely painted deschi da parto (wooden childbirth trays) and maiolica childbirth bowls known as scodelle da parto. Trays and bowls were often painted with encouraging images of a mother resting in her confinement room, with charming representations of Renaissance interiors. Marked with heraldic devices, these objects were prized possessions handed down from generation to generation.

The section Profane Love will focus on erotic, at times salacious, imagery in drawings, prints, and other objects created by some of the most celebrated artists of the time, including Parmigianino and Giulio Romano. Many of these works exhibit a witty, burlesque sensibility that satirizes more intellectually elevated modes of art and literature. Classical mythology, especially the loves of the gods recounted by Ovid and other ancient poets, provided a convenient pretext for the portrayal of erotic imagery. The world of the courtesan and the luxury items associated with it will also be explored in the exhibition. Famed for their beauty, cultural accomplishments, and wit, courtesans were especially prevalent in Rome and Venice.

From Cassone to Poesia: Paintings of Love and Marriage will shift the focus to nuptial portraits and paintings on themes of love that decorated bed chambers and private quarters. Highly important and intriguing works by such painters as Fra Filippo Lippi, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Lorenzo Lotto will be on display, including double portraits commemorating marriages, as well as rare portraits of babies, fathers with their children, and widows.

Decorating the camera (bedroom) of a new husband and wife was of enormous importance, and the families would spend huge sums on cassoni and panel paintings called spalliere, which were installed about shoulder height as part of the wainscoting. Virtuous women from ancient history or the Hebrew Bible, whose stories were depicted on cassoni panels, were also the subjects of paintings that decorated the walls of nuptial chambers, serving as models of morality for the newlyweds.

The poetic genius of the Renaissance will be represented by some of the most beguiling and sensual works of Titian, Palma il Vecchio, Tintoretto, and their contemporaries. Portraits of belle donne (beautiful women) reflect poetry that lauded women’s beauty. The symbolism of these ravishing paintings is not straightforward, and the identity of the women portrayed continues to be debated. Are they courtesans, brides, or idealized beauties? The extraordinarily sensuous representations of Venus by Titian and other Venetians launch us into a new era of paintings that treat subjects related to love and marriage. Distant cousins of the reclining nudes found in the inner lids of cassoni in the fifteenth century, they are imbued with far richer poetic sensibilities—visual equivalents of the poems that the ancient Romans recited at weddings. Like contemporary poems and prose by writers beginning with Petrarch, these mythological and allegorical paintings speak the language of love.

The great Renaissance paintings about love and marriage owe their rich complexity, and often ambiguity, to the varied ways people thought about love and marriage at the time. The exhibition offers an illuminating and engaging look at some of the most beautiful works of the period from this historical and social point of view.

Art and Love in Renaissance Italy is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Kimbell Art Museum. It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. On view at the Metropolitan Museum through February 16, the exhibition comes to the Kimbell as its only other venue. Promotional support is provided by American Airlines, NBC 5 and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, New Haven and London, which is available in the Museum Shop. This important volume, by a distinguished group of scholars, is the first to examine the entire range of works to which Renaissance rituals of love and marriage gave rise. It is a major contribution to our understanding of Renaissance art in its broader cultural context.

For additional information please contact:
Jessica Brandrup, Head of Marketing and Public Relations
jbrandrup@kimbellmuseum.org or
Sonya Cisneros, Public Relations and Marketing Assistant
scisneros@kimbellmuseum.org or
call: (817-332-8451) or
log on to http://www.kimbellart.org

Kimbell Acquires Earliest Known Michelangelo Painting

Michelangelo’s painting of
<b><i>The Torment of Saint Anthony</i></b>
Michelangelo
The Torment of Saint Anthony
c. 1487–88. Oil and tempera on panel
18 1/2 x 13 1/4 in. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

Michelangelo’s painting of The Torment of Saint Anthony, described by his earliest biographers, has been acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. Its purchase was announced today by the Kimbell’s newly appointed director, Dr. Eric McCauley Lee. Executed in oil and tempera on a wooden panel, this work is the first painting by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) to enter an American collection, and one of only four known easel paintings generally believed to come from his hand. The others are the Doni Tondo in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery and two unfinished paintings in London’s National Gallery, The Manchester Madonna and The Entombment.

Dr. Lee commented, “The acquisition of this rediscovered work from the very beginnings of Michelangelo’s artistic career offers an extraordinary opportunity to advance the understanding of European art.” Kay Fortson, president of the Kimbell Art Foundation’s board of directors, said, “This is an outstanding acquisition for the Kimbell. Michelangelo’s rare painting will be a beacon in the Museum’s already distinguished collection.”

According to Michelangelo’s biographer and former student, Ascanio Condivi, whose information came directly from the artist, the young Michelangelo was granted access to some of the prints and drawings in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio. Of these, we are told, one particularly attracted his attention: an engraving by the 15th-century German master Martin Schongauer of The Temptation of Saint Anthony. Michelangelo reportedly took this engraving and, in an effort to try his hand at painting, produced a mesmerizing rendition of it on a wooden panel. Condivi also provides the curious detail that while Michelangelo was working on the painting, he visited the local fishmarket in order to learn how to paint fish scales—a feature missing from the engraving. When the painting was finally unveiled, it apparently elicited a good deal of admiration, and even Ghirlandaio is said to have been taken aback. Future writers were equally admiring of the Saint Anthony. It figures prominently in Giorgio Vasari’s laudatory accounts of Michelangelo’s life (the first from 1550; the second from 1568), and Benedetto Varchi also mentions the story of the painting in his funeral oration for Michelangelo in 1564.

The painting, measuring 18½ by 13¼ inches (47 by 35 centimeters), was sold at auction in London in July 2008 and has since undergone conservation and technical research at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it will be the subject of a summer focus exhibition. The painting had been known to scholars for many decades, but until its recent cleaning, discolored varnishes and disfiguring overpaints had prevented a full appreciation of its masterful execution, which is rich in colors and lively brushwork. In his analysis of the painting, Dr. Keith Christiansen, the Jayne Wrightsman Curator of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum, concludes: “The case for this panel being the one described by Condivi is exceptionally strong . . . and given what we know, the burden of proof that it is NOT the picture described by Condivi is with those who would deny it.” Dr. Everett Fahy, the Sir John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum, is also in complete agreement. He has known this work since 1960 and always promoted its attribution to Michelangelo. His views—along with those of Dr. Christiansen—will be published in forthcoming articles on the painting.

While being cleaned, the painting also underwent a technical study, which fully supported the attribution. It became evident that Michelangelo had elaborated on the composition, and it is now possible through the aid of infrared reflectography to observe how the artist modified his German source. See the attached technical report by Michael Gallagher, conservator of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum. “The important technical information that has come to light includes revelations of numerous pentimenti, or artist’s changes, that show Michelangelo working through his ideas in paint,” reports Claire Barry, the Kimbell’s chief conservator.

According to Dr. Edmund P. Pillsbury, former director of the Kimbell (1980–98), who endorsed the acquisition, “Michelangelo’s brush transforms the bizarre shapes and unsettling appearance of the Teutonic monsters and demons into a far more naturalistic and convincing account of the monk’s torments. Moreover, Michelangelo’s invention of the highly poetic but symbolic landscape of fertile and arid passages joined by a distant riverscape with rolling hills roots the event in a topography resembling the Arno valley of Florence rather than the site of the actual event recorded in faraway Egypt. Michelangelo brought the torment a lot closer to home.”

The remarkably fresh and well-preserved gem, believed to have been painted in 1487–88, when Michelangelo was 12 or 13 years old, was acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum from Adam Williams Fine Art of New York for an undisclosed sum. Following its inaugural presentation at the Metropolitan Museum, which will showcase the recent technical examination, the panel will go on public view this fall for the first time in its new home––Louis Kahn’s award-winning Kimbell Art Museum.

Background of the Artist

Born in 1475 near Florence, Michelangelo is universally acknowledged as one of the towering geniuses of the Renaissance. Already by his teenage years, he had proven himself a superlative sculptor and painter. His contributions to the field of architecture are also renowned. Best known for his mature works such as the ceiling frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, he evolved a forceful, muscular style that gripped the imaginations of artists for decades to come. First and foremost, Michelangelo thought himself a sculptor, and many of his works in marble are icons of Western art: his Vatican Pietà, his vigorous David in Florence, and his tragic and unfinished Rondanini Pietà. As a painter, Michelangelo was equally influential. As The Torment of Saint Anthony proves, he was drawn to painting at an early age, and by the time of his final masterpiece, the Last Judgment, also in the Sistine Chapel, he had presided over a vast revolution in Italian painting.

A Self-Portrait By Frida Kahlo, Now On View

THE KIMBELL’S GUEST OF HONOR PROGRAM

Frida Kahlo
Itzcuintli Dog with Me
c. 1938, oil on canvas
On loan from a private collection.
©2009 Banco de México, Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The Kimbell is delighted to welcome another extraordinary work of art in its ongoing Guest of Honor program, a self-portrait by the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907–1954). This painting will be on view through the fall of 2009.

As in more than 80 self-portraits that Kahlo painted, Itzcuintli Dog with Me, from about 1938, records a particular autobiographical moment. She was about to undertake some travels in connection with exhibitions of her work in New York and Paris. Her tumultuous, sporadic marriage to fellow artist Diego Rivera was on again after a lengthy separation—he had an affair with her younger sister Cristina—and she feared the consequences of leaving home for an extended period.

“Kahlo shows herself in quiet despair as if awaiting her last journey,” Salomon Grimberg, an authority on her work, has observed. “The pent up turmoil shows in her tight face, and the marijuana cigarette held by a ‘roach holder’ ringed around her left forefinger suggests a wish to withdraw into another reality.”

Butchers, Dragons, Gods, and Skeletons:
An Exhibition of Film Installations by Philip Haas Inspired by Works in the Collection

July 19–October 25, 2009

The Kimbell Art Museum has commissioned the distinguished filmmaker Philip Haas to create a series of film installations that interpret and elaborate upon paintings and objects in the museum’s permanent collection. The installations feature poetic and sensuous moving images that appear on unconventional screen configurations and are enhanced by architectural and sculptural effects as well as original music. One moment the images form themselves into an uncanny re-creation of the chosen piece from the collection, the next they give a vivid new form to ideas and visual delights it has suggested. In this way the installations are both beautiful works of art in themselves and invitations to look at art with imaginative abandon. They will complement a full display of the Kimbell's permanent collection, each occupying a space near the work to which it relates.

The first installation in the series, Haas’s response to Annibale Carracci’s The Butcher’s Shop (early 1580s), has already been shown to acclaim at the 2008 Venice and Toronto film festivals. At least four further installations are planned for the exhibition. The subjects are: the Red-Figure Cup Showing the Death of Pentheus and a Maenad by the ancient Greek vase painter Douris (c. 480 B.C.); a Chinese scroll painting, Arhat Taming the Dragon (early 14th century); Apollo and the Continents by G. B. Tiepolo (c. 1739); and Skeletons Warming Themselves by James Ensor (1889).

Before becoming a filmmaker, Philip Haas studied art history at Harvard. He has made documentaries with artists as well as a number of feature films, including the Oscar-nominated Angels and Insects (1995).

Private Collection, Texas: European Masterpieces from Texas Homes, Past and Present

November 22, 2009–March 21, 2010

Paul Cézanne, Trees and Rocks, Near the Château Noir,
oil on canvas, c. 1900–1906,
The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis;
Museum purchase from Cornelia Ritchie and Ritchie Trust No. 4, 1996.
Formerly in the collection of Montgomery (“Montie”) Ritchie, Canyon, Texas.

The Kimbell Art Museum is organizing an exhibition of major paintings and sculptures bought by Texans for their private collections between 1900 and the present. The exhibition will focus exclusively on the art of Europe and the ancient Mediterranean from about 700 B.C. to the 1950s, with approximately 90 works. Featured artists will include Rembrandt, Guido Reni, Angelica Kauffman, Monet, Caillebotte, Cézanne, Picasso, Magritte, and Max Ernst.

Since the first decade of the 20th century, when wealth in Texas began to reach a national scale, private individuals have collected works from the art of the American West to contemporary academic painting from America and Europe. By the time of the oil boom in the 1920s, a pattern of discerning collecting was established that emphasized European art from antiquity to the modern masters. The men and women who purchased these works hailed from all parts of the state, though most were from the five major cities.