No one interested in ICA&CA is not also a devotee of the Frick Collection. Everything about it resonates with us: the paintings, the decorative arts, the Carrère & Hastings architectue of the former home of Henry Clay Frick. Not the least of the Frick's virtues is that it is one of the precious few museums that has not fallen prey to megalomania and the blockbuster syndrome. We go there regularly to view the permanent collections. But in recent years the Frick has also offered special exhibitions, always of the highest scholarly and curatorial quality. These exhibitions are unfailingly excellent, and one that's up through July 16 is worth a trip to New York all by itself. It's called Veronese's Allegories: Virtue, Love, and Exploration in Renaissance Venice, and it brings together five--yes, only five--paintings by the 16th-century Italian master. Bernard Berenson wrote of Veronese:
When I contemplate Veronese’s paintings, I experience a satisfaction so full and perfect that I feel seized by it in all of my being, in my senses, my feelings, my intellect, and then, all things considered, I love him at least as much as I love any other painter who has ever painted.
The Frick brings together the two Veroneses in its permanent collection with one from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and two from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The Frick Collection is on Fifth Avenue and 70th Street.
One thing the show cannot give you a sense of is how great Veronese was as a muralist. "He was made for Palladio," says Paul Johnson. Alas, only one of Veronese's villa commissions is intact, but it's hard to beat: the Villa Barbaro, at Maser.
Oh I love this post. You hit the nail on the head.
Posted by: aion kinah | March 02, 2010 at 01:26 AM