I have always loved art history, for the stories a work of art can tell us of its time, place and the people who lived at that particular point in history. Although I note the formal elements of a work, I am more interested in engagement with art on a personal level- how does it make me feel, think, understand. I had a particularly profound experience in a museum this June that touched on all these elements of engagement and more...
I caught the Sculpture in the Age of Donatello: Renaissance Masterpieces from the Florence Cathedral at the Museum of Biblical Art in New York on the last day of the exhibit, the last day of the museum, as a matter of fact. I came to the show to see masterpieces that had never before left Italy in a totally new setting (it would have been sacrilegious for me to not visit such greatness when it was at my doorstep) but left with a new awareness of the greatness of the Renaissance.
The wonders of the Renaissance are awe-inspiring, to be sure, but for people from non-Western cultures they require a certain lexicon. Even though humanism was one of the main driving forces of this period in history, the context for most commissions were embedded in the Judea-Christian culture. I remember once overhearing a young man in a museum saying "It looks beautiful to be sure, but I wish I understood what it meant..." as he gazed at a 16th century painting of the four evangelists. Of course no one needs anything except the use of their eyes when gazing up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or the majestic sculptures of the great masters filling Florentine museums but my experience at the MOBIA exhibit was different even those moments.
Being up-close and personal with these sculptures, so far removed from their original context, I was able to engage with them as magnificent works of art that moved me. I could not only see but feel the humanism embedded in these works... the intensity, the anguish, the contemplation. The experience was so powerful that I left with a new understanding and appreciation for the greatness of the Renaissance.
So, what was so different about the works of display on this exhibit than all those other masterpieces of the Renaissance we encounter in museums regularly? Those living outside of Italy can experience the Italian Renaissance mostly through the paintings on museum walls and encountering these monumental works, in such close proximity created a very intimate level of engagement that surpassed any type of intellectual admiration. This was a traumatic experience for someone who is a wholehearted believer in the relevance of context above all else. So, how could I be so moved by these works without any context? or was the context present in the knowledge of knowing their authentic place and purpose? Didn't we need the Cathedral with its doors and niches for which these works were created? How about the tight streets of Florence that surround the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, shaded by the Duomo? These sculptures come from the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, a museum that houses the original sculptures from the Cathedral and the Baptistry from the natural elements, but due to their close proximity to their original location (around the corner from the entrance of the Cathedral and the Baptistry) I feel it is still a vastly different experience to encounter them in a small exhibition space of a museum in New York.
I will share my photographs of the exhibit with some of the gallery labels and let you decide for yourself...