It was wonderful!
I walked there from the 33rd Street PATH train station. It's a great walk, past the zoo and all these really cool playgrounds. Why are the playgrounds in Central Park so much cooler than the playgrounds in Golden Gate Park? It's really not fair. (By the way, anyone not in the know, if you're in the Bay Area and you're wanting to go down a giant concrete slide similar to this one only longer, there's one in the park connected via tunnel to the Berkley Rose Garden! But you have to navigate there through Narnia. I'd highly recommend it, especially if you bring your own cardboard. The sand is already there. You throw the sand down the slide right before you, who should be seated on the cardboard big enough that you can hold on without scraping your fingers, start sliding. It'll make you go faster and keep you from wearing out your cardboard as quickly.)
Anyways, I got there and went in. I'm apparently not supposed to use the pictures I'm allowed to take in their galleries except for personal use. But their rules strictly prohibit the distribution of those pictures or the public showing of them... So if it's a blog, and that's KIND OF like a journal, does that count? It's not like these are professional grade pictures. In fact they're pretty crappy because of the lighting (which I know is supposedly to preserve the paintings, but I also think is to discourage photography). And if I say they're in the Met and this is to encourage anyone who DOES happen to read this to go and see the real ones since the pictures don't do them justice? Whatever. They can come yell at me if they find me.
There were a LOT of lions in that museum. All kinds of lions. In all kinds of contexts. It was pretty sweet.There were a lot of other things too though.
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes's Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuniga. An art history note (that most readers of this blog probably won't need): Christian art often uses birds to symbolize the soul, and Baroque art used caged birds to show innocence. The card by this painting speculated that "Goya may have intended this portrait as an illustration of the frail boundaries that separate the child's world from the forces of evil or as a commentary on the fleeting nature of innocence and youth." It goes on to say that this painting "may have been executed after the child's death in 1792, since the imagery and sinister undertone seem more characteristic of Goya's works of the 1790s."
Soap Bubbles, by Jean Simeon Chardin. I love this one. Apparently soap bubbles used to allude to the transience of life when used in paintings. Did anyone know that? I didn't. I guess that's something I'd know if I took an art history class...
Jean Marc Nattier did a bunch of paintings in the European Painting Gallery wing, a few of which I found interesting. Or at least parts of them. Like his portrait Madame Marsollier and Her Daughter. Apparently the woman was a well known beauty of the court born and bred and known as The Velvet Duchess for her pretensions. But what I liked were her daughter's eyes. The daughter was the only thing that seemed alive in the whole painting. The duchess was far to posed and glassy eyed.
Nattier's portrait of some courtier I forgot to make note of posed as Diana. I think it's funny cause Diana would never have worn so hindering a gettup, so the fur masks nothing. And Diana's recurve bow would have been strung with a usable string. The one the model was using had a string tied around the nocks and was ridiculously long. Did they think it dangerous to have a woman hold a usable bow? That she'd hurt herself or accidentally shoot someone with it? I bet she was amused too. She looks amused by something. Am I too critical of these paintings? I know they were all vanity portraits. Done in a very stuffy prude era none the less, so she would never have been allowed to pose in any sort of dress that Diana really would have worn...
Nattier's Louise Henriette de Bourbon-Conti, Later Duchesse d'Orleans. From the late 1600s to early 1700s. I liked how she was waist deep in water that was spilling out of the jar. Like the Mississippi river was flowing out of her water jug.
This incredible landscape was done by "El Greco" (Domenikos Theoto- kopoulos) sometime in the late 1500s or early 1600s. It shows Toledo from the north. Apparently the artist took some liberties with the placement of the buildings so that you could see the cathedral which would have been blocked from view from that angle.
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