Revisiting the Met

When we are in New York, my short list of what I want to do always includes a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  In my opinion, it's the finest museum this country has to offer.  Each year I like to revisit 'old friends', as well as scope out the new exhibits.  This year there were two really exciting exhibits.

Being from Fort Worth, we loved the Kimball Museum, and they own an important painting by Caravaggio.  We became instant fans of this Italian painter of the late 1500's and early 1600's.  He was the first artist to paint 'naturally'.  No, not in the nude, he was the first guy to use actual models for his pictures.  He started with a blank canvas and painted the expressions and poses provided by real people standing in front of him. Before him, artists drew what they were going to paint on paper and then copied the drawing onto a canvas.  That technique was acceptable when you were illustrating a Biblical parable or perhaps an oft told Green myth.  Since Caravaggio never drew out his paintings on paper, he quickly began posing his models in a more modern context such as this painting showing a young dandy being fleeced at a card game.

"The Card Sharp" - 1594

As with any great artist of the time period, Caravaggio had disciples.  One of these was French painter, Valentin de Boulogne.  The Met together with the Louve put together an exhibition of Boulogne's paintings.  He only created 60 paintings, and there were 45 in the exhibition.  He took Caravaggio's ideas about using models and pushed them even farther.  We were privileged to see so many magnificent paintings by this Renaissance artist.

We also took in two famous portraits of Ben Franklin as well as some gorgeous furniture from the American Aesthetic Movement.  Finally, Drake was happy to see some gems of a baseball card collection donated to the Met.  Jeff Burdick, the collector/donor, was told by the Met he needed to 'catalog' his collection before they would accept it.  He did such a good job, the book he wrote about his cataloging procedure is now the 'bible' of cataloging 'paper' collections such as posters, leaflets, and, of course, baseball cards.

Here are the pictures:  https://goo.gl/photos/KP66yXWpwWUXNgRd7   

The other exhibition which caught my interest was a costume exhibition.  Drake was just humoring me when we trekked down the hidden staircase to see the exhibit, but he quickly got interested.  He especially liked the 18th century cherry colored wool/silk men's suit.  These are sixty iconic pieces of fashion owned by the Metropolitan.  There were several which I don't think could be called 'clothes'.  Take a look and see what you think.

https://goo.gl/photos/xTFMuRj7R3SG6Mnu8