Displaying items by tag: terracotta

Two erotically charged works by the French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard have been reunited at the Toledo Museum of Art for the first time in 25 years. ‘Blind Man’s Buff’ and ‘The See-Saw’ are the centerpieces of the exhibition ‘Love and Play: A Pair of Paintings by Fragonard,’ which is the first show in the museum’s ENCOUNTERS series that pairs exceptional works of art in new and inventive ways.

‘Blind Man’s Buff,’ which is part of the Toledo Museum’s collection, and ‘The See-Saw,’ which is on loan from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, were painted in Paris during the early 1750s and were most likely commissioned by Baron Baillet de Saint-Julien. The works passed through a number of private collections until they appeared on the market in 1954 and were ultimately separated. The companion paintings were reunited several times for temporary exhibitions in 1968, 1987 and 1988. In addition to the paintings, the Toledo Museum’s exhibition will include two engraved copies of the canvases, a Rococo terracotta sculpture by the French sculptor Clodion, and a small selection of French decorative arts.

Fragonard was one of the most celebrated artists of the 18th-century Rococo era of French painting and was known for his risque depictions of love and courtship. ‘Blind Man’s Buff’ and ‘The See-Saw’ epitomize the exuberance and hedonism that attracted Fragonard’s patrons.

‘Love and Play’ will be on view at the Toledo Museum through May 4, 2014.

The touring exhibition The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece: Masterworks from the British Museum is currently on view at the Dallas Museum of Art through October 6, 2013. Presenting 120 objects from the British Museum’s renowned collection of Greek and Roman art, each work explores the human form and humanity as sources of artistic inspiration. The show spans three millennia of Greek civilization and includes marble and bronze sculptures, painted pottery, terracotta, and jewelry.

The Body Beautiful is divided into 10 thematic sections that illustrate the various ways the Greeks interpreted the human body including Cycladic figures and realistic Roman genre sculptures. Highlights from the exhibition include the Diskobolos (discus thrower) sculpture from the second century A.D., which is on view for the first time in the United States, and a model of Ancient Olympia as it would have appeared around 100 B.C. A video installation will be shown alongside the model providing glimpses of the original Olympic sites and artworks depicting the ancient athletic event.

Maxwell L. Anderson, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, said, “We will present a visually engaging and thought-provoking exploration of the human condition as seen by the ancient Greeks, and, equally, of the origins of our construct of beauty today.”

The Minneapolis Museum of Arts acquired a rare Renaissance bust of St. John the Baptist yesterday, May 8, 2013. Created by the Italian sculptor Benedetto da Rovezzano (1474-1554), the terracotta bust was one of the works handpicked by Hitler to appear in his Führermuseum, which never came to fruition. The institution was expected to house a massive collection of the most important works of Western Art in the historical canon.

Rovezzano’s bust was bought from Theresia Willi Lanz by Hitler’s special representative, Hans Posse, who was in charge of traveling across Europe seizing important works from Jewish art collectors and buying them from non-Jewish collectors. After the Führermuseum was never realized, the bust was hidden along with a number of important works by Leonardo da Vinci (1542-1519), Vermeer (1632-1675), and Michelangelo (1475-1564) in a salt mine in Austria. As it became clear that the Nazis would not win World War II, Hitler’s officials called for the destruction of the mine. However, the miners from the Austrian town wished to keep their livelihood intact and worked to save the mines and the art inside by removing inactivated Nazi bombs and setting them off through controlled explosions within the tunnels of the mines, saving the salt and the art but making them inaccessible. The bust was ultimately returned to the Netherlands.

Rovezanno was one of the most prominent sculptors during the high Renaissance and his bust of St. John the Baptist is well known among Renaissance experts. Created in Florence during the time when Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael (1483-1520) were working there, the bust is the earliest Renaissance sculpture in the Minneapolis Institute’s collection. The bust of St. John the Baptist will go on view in the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts permanent galleries alongside other renowned Renaissance busts by Agostino Zoppo (circa 1520-1572) and Giovanni Battista Caccini (1556-1613).

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles will return a terracotta head depicting the Greek god Hades to Sicily. The museum has been working with Italian officials for two years to decide whether or not the artifact should be returned. The Getty purchased the terracotta head from New York collector Maurice Tempelsman for $530,000 in 1985. Tempelsman had originally acquired the piece from the disgraced antiquities dealer Robin Symes.

Officials determined that the terracotta head was originally located in Sicily at a sanctuary site for the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone. The piece’s provenance was discovered by comparing the head to four terracotta fragments found near the famous and highly looted archaeological site Morgantina in Sicily. It soon came to light that the head was illegally excavated from Morgantina in the early 1970s.

The Getty entered into an agreement with Italy’s Ministry of Culture in 2007 after a long legal battle regarding looted works and the museum’s former curator, Marion True. The Getty now has connections in various parts of Italy to facilitate cultural exchange and has been working closely with Sicilian officials since 2010.

The head of Hades will be on view at the Getty Villa as part of the exhibition The Sanctuaries of Demeter and Persephone at Morgantina through January 21, 2013. The work will then join the Getty-organized traveling exhibition Sicily: Art and Invention between Greece and Rome before being placed in Sicily’s Museo Archeologico.

There was plenty of excitement when the San Antonio Museum of Art’s exhibition, Aphrodite and the Gods of Love, opened on September 15. Since then, the show has turned into a source of controversy. Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the exhibition features 125 statues, vases, terracotta and bronze figures, mirrors and jewelry from the MFA and seven works from the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, Italy. Aphrodite is the first exhibition to focus on the art of ancient Greece in the San Antonio Museum of Art’s history.

A 2,000-year-old statuette of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, has been used in promotional material to spread the word about the rare exhibit and has left some people in shock. The San Antonio Current, San Antonio Magazine, San Antonio Jewish Journal, and San Antonio Business Journal all ran the advertisement without question. Three other publications as well as the San Antonio International Airport refused to promote the exhibition as long as a nude Aphrodite was featured in the ad.

While the controversy has some people flustered, it has brought a good amount of attention to the San Antonio Museum and the exhibition. Aphrodite will be on view through February 17, 2013.