Philadelphia Museum Of Art, 1

The Philadelphia Museum of Art was our main interest in the city...a large and impressive collection in a great building. Happily, a ticket to the museum gets you in for two days, so we were able to see what we wanted to see in a relatively relaxed manner. I can think of a few other great museums that might benefit from a similar strategy.... We were there on September 17th and 18th, saw most but not all of the collection, and agreed that a return some day might well be in order. As usual, the pix below reflect our interests more than anything else.

The PMA, the Rocky Steps in the foreground; heaven for those of us
who like architectural symmetry

We assume someone at the Louvre is working on a LEGO representation

Really tying things together...this is the original Gaudens Diana
that stood atop the old Madison Square Gardens building in the
early 20th; we saw the half-sized version at the Met way back
in '24

The PMA, like other major American museums, is known for its rooms,
which acquaint the visitor with many different aspects of a given style,
culture, epoch, what have you...we are now in an Asian temple

And another

A dwelling...so similar to representations at the Met...

A (Chinese) scholar's study

A scholar's Lingbi type rock

Satsuma incense burner, pierced openwork

Moving right along now, we are at the beginning of 
European art...St. Christopher Carrying the Infant Jesus,
1440s. by a follower of Jan van Eyck; click to enlarge 
and note the landscape in the sky...

Many museums are nearly dismissive of northern art...all their

attention goes to the (Italian) Renaissance...above

is the most intelligent blurb I have seen on the topic in a 

museum...and the collection was about to get a lot better

Robert Campin, Christ and the Virgin, c. 1430; a contemporary of

van Eyck, also among the first to begin fooling around with oil painting

Jan van Eyck, St. Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata, 1430; the painting could not be larger
than 5"x8", yet the detail is...van Eyck...note the heavenly and earthly landscapes, the feather-dancing
Jesus crucificado...the flora...made my day! Oil on vellum, mounted on panel

Another room...the cloister from the Abbey of Saint Genis des Fontaines,
13th century

Rogier van der Weyden, The Crucifixion, with Virgin Mary and John
the Baptist Mourning, 1460

Ghirlandiao's copy of Memling's 1465 Man of Sorrows;
decades later, Ghirlandiao was Michaelangelo's teacher

Attributed to Bosch, The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1500

Attributed to Bosch, Two Shepherds and The Retinue of the Magi,
early 1500s

Windows from a Hospitalier Chapel, near Beaune, France, c. 1400

Painted oak Crucifixion scene, southern Netherlands, mid-15th

Botticelli, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1465; very early...

In the museum's main hall, perhaps a dozen huge tapestries, designed
by Rubens, woven in Paris, 16th; Constantine's triumphal entry into Rome

Another room, various elements from the Stiegerhof, a manor house
near Villach, Austria, mid 16th

Altarpiece from the chapel of the Chateau of Pagny, Burgundy, France, 
mid 16th

Jan Breughel the Younger, The Allegory of Sight (Venus and Cupid in
an Art Gallery), 1660

Titian, Portrait of Archbishop Filippo Archinto, 1558;
the veil may have represented Archinto's thwarted ambitions
or his death; regardless, a testament to Titian's painterly skill

Rembrandt, Not a Self-Portrait, c. 1650

Steen, The Doctor's Visit, 1660; we love Steen's moralizing humor;
apparently doctors still made house calls in the 17th century