Tuesday, September 29, 2026

Philadelphia Museum Of Art, 2

Continuing our visit to Philadelphia's great art museum...

Every great museum has a super-sized elevator for hauling
the large-format stuff around; every elevator in the PMA,
with one exception we found, is this large!

Enamel plaques mounted on oak, a Nativity, etc., c. 1500, Limoge, France,
notable because it is by The Master of the Large Foreheads

Detail from an altarpiece, carved and painted, late Medieval,
The Circumcision; ouch; note crucificado pose...foreshadowing... 

Team Rubens' Prometheus Bound, 1618; eagle by Snyders
(Rubens didn't do birds)

Another gorgeous drawing room, 19th, French?

Judith Leyster, The Last Drop, 1639

Another Steen, Rhetoricians at a Window, c. 1660; a thing
in 17th century Netherlands, readings and criticism to the
street; and derision therefrom

Nice, typical Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Cattle and Peasants, 1629

Poussin, Birth of Venus, 1635; sorry, no comparison with Botticelli

Louise-Elizabeth Vigee-LeBrun, Portrait of Madame Du Barry;
two of the more interesting of 18th century women, Louis XIV's
mistress and great arbiter of taste, and the greatest portrait painter
of the age; Vigee-LeBrun lived to tell about too...

A Vernet that is not a harbor scene...Villa at Caprarola, 1746; 
brought to Philadelphia by Joseph Bonaparte, brother of the emperor,
in 1815, a good year to get out of Dodge

Favorite son

Pennsylvania Dutch kitchen scene, Millbach, c. 1752

Contemporaneous bust of Bernini by Bernardo Fioriti, 1660;
Bernini was the greatest of all sculptors, IMO

Huge tapestry of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza being served by 
the ladies, Goeblins, Paris, 1720s

Hubert Robert, Ruins of a Roman Bath, 1766

Obligatory Canaletto, Rialto Bridge, 1730; relatively small version

One of two Turners, The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, 1835;
not a late Turner, but getting there

David, Pope Pius VII and Cardinal Caprara, c. 1808; Napoleon
held the pope hostage at Fountainebleau until the latter finally
blessed N's coronation; posing here with the French cardinal

Delacroix, Interior of a Madrid Dominican Convent, 1831



Drawing room from Lansdowne House, by Robert Adam, later 1700s

Two paintings from an exhibition on Van Gogh's Sunflowers

Berthe Morisot, Young Girl with a Basket, 1892

Monet, Nympheas, Japanese Bridge, 1820s; experimenting with new
styles, color,  brushwork...very late in his career

Miro, Horn, Pipe, and Red Flower, 1920

Hector Guimard, Fireplace and other stuff from Castel Beranger, 
Paris, an apartment house he designed; inside and out, top to bottom;
muy famoso

More Guimard (a favorite), golden platter, hankie designed for his wife

Guimard chair


No comments: