5 Masterpieces of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents over 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy.

The Museum lives in two iconic sites in New York City - The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters.

Millions of people also take part in The Met experience online.

Since its founding in 1870, The Met has always aspired to be more than a treasury of rare and beautiful objects.

Every day, art comes alive in the Museum's galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.

Guido Reni | The Immaculate Conception, 1627

Guido Reni (Bologna, 1575-1642), during his lifetime the most celebrated living painter in Italy, was famous for the elegance of his compositions and the beauty and grace of his heads, earning him the epithet "Divine".

This altarpiece, with its otherworldly space shaped by clouds and putti in a high-keyed palette, was commissioned in about 1627 by the Spanish ambassador in Rome for the infanta of Spain.

It later hung in the cathedral of Seville, where it deeply influenced Spanish painters, especially Bartolomé Estebán Murillo, whose workshop produced many iterations of this subject.

The Immaculate Conception became a symbol of the universality of the Catholic Church and was used for the conversion of populations across Spain’s global empire. | Source: © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Guido Reni (Italian, 1575-1642) | The Immaculate Conception, 1627 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Egyptian blue | The first synthetic pigment in history

Egyptian blue, also known as calcium copper silicate (calcium copper tetrasilicate) or cuprorivaite, is a pigment that was used in ancient Egypt for thousands of years.

It is considered to be the first synthetic pigment.

It was known to the Romans by the name caeruleum.

After the Roman era, Egyptian blue fell from use and, thereafter, the manner of its creation was forgotten.

In modern times, scientists have been able to analyze its chemistry and reconstruct how to make it.

Tomb of Amunherkhepshef, son of Pharaoh Ramesses III

Joaquín Sorolla to Clotilde: “You are my flesh, my life and my brain”..

Clotilde García Castillo (1865-1929) married Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (Spanish Realist/Impressionist painter, 1863-1923) at the age of 23 and they ended their days together.

The painter died six years before her, in 1923.

Clotilde donated all her assets to the State for the foundation of a museum in honour of her husband's work - the family home where the Sorolla Museum stands today.

Joaquín Sorolla | Clotilde seated on the Sofa (Clotilde sentada en un sofá), 1910 | Museo Sorolla, Madrid

Of all the portraits Sorolla painted of his wife, this is probably the most successful and is a fundamental work within the context of his artistic production.

The viewer is presented here with a refined lady, reflecting her social status and so mirroring her husband’s professional success.

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida | Clotilde seated on the Sofa, 1910 | Museo Sorolla

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Bay of Naples, 1881

The corner of the balcony visible at lower left in this composition indicates Renoir’s vantage point overlooking the bay of Naples.

His position afforded an iconic view of the harbor with the volcano Mount Vesuvius in the background, wafting smoke into the sky.

Inspired by the southern Italian light, Renoir painted another version of this vista at a different time of day (The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.).

James Duncan, a wealthy sugar refiner, purchased the present work in 1883, making it the first Impressionist picture acquired by a Scottish collector.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | The Bay of Naples, 1881 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mao Zedong | Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom! / Lascia che mille fiori sboccino!

The Hundred Flowers Campaign, also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement (Chinese: 百花齐放), was a period from 1956-1957 in the People's Republic of China during which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) encouraged citizens to openly express their opinions of the Communist Party.

Following the failure of the campaign, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong conducted an ideological crackdown on those who criticized the party, which continued through 1959.

During the campaign, differing views and solutions to national policy were encouraged based on the famous expression by Mao:

"The policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science".

Anselm Kiefer | Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom, 2000 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

François-Joseph Navez | The Massacre of the Innocents, 1824

"The massacre of the innocents' was created in 1824 by Belgian painter François-Joseph Navez (1787-1869) in Neoclassicism style.

The painting is currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"The Massacre of the Innocents" is a story from the life of Christ.

As recounted in the Gospel of Matthew (2:16-18), Herod the Great, King of Judea, ordered the slaughter of all boys under the age of two in and near the town of Bethlehem.

Herod’s larger aim was to kill the infant Jesus, who had been heralded as King of the Jews.

François-Joseph Navez | The Massacre of the Innocents, 1824 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Y.G. Srimati (1926-2007)

Born in Mysore into a cultured Mandayam Brahmin Tamil family and educated in Madras (present-day Chennai, in South India), the Indian artist Y. G. Srimati, at a young age, received classical training in the four traditional South Indian arts-voice, music, dance, and painting.

She became a highly accomplished vocalist and performer of classical Indian music and kept a lifelong friendship with the preeminent Carnatic vocalist M.S. Subbulakshmi.

She also toured in India and the United States, and in the United Kingdom with the influential classical Indian dancer Ram Gopal.

Roger Fry | Post-Impressionist painter and Art critic

The British art historian, curator, critic and painter Roger Eliot Fry (London, 1866-1934) was one of the foremost advocates of modern art of his time and was largely responsible for introducing modern French art to Anglophone audiences in Great Britain and the United States.

As a member of the Bloomsbury Group, cofounder of the Omega Workshops, curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and professor of art at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, Fry remains among the most important critical voices on art in the early twentieth century.

Claude Monet and the Sea

Claude Monet | The Jetty a Le Havre, 1868

Claude Monet | The Manneporte (Étretat), 1883 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Monet spent most of February 1883 at Étretat, a fishing village and resort on the Normandy coast.

He painted twenty views of the beach and the three extraordinary rock formations in the area: the Porte d'Aval, the Porte d'Amont, and the Manneporte.

Anselm Kiefer, 1945 | Neo-expressionist painter / sculptor

"Art is difficult, it is not entertainment!" - Anselm Kiefer, German painter and sculptor.

Biography from: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Anselm Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen, Baden-Württembürg, Germany, and raised near the east bank of the Rhine in the region of the Black Forest.

Kiefer was named after the nineteenth-century classical painter Anselm Feuerbach and planned from childhood to become an artist.

After studies at the university in Freiburg and the academy in Karlsruhe, he studied informally in the early 1970s with the artist Joseph Beuys on occasional visits to Düsseldorf.

Anselm Kiefer | Die fruchtbare Halbmond / La Mezzaluna fertile | Sammlung Essl Museum

Renoir at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Famed for his sensual figures and charming scenes of pretty women, Pierre Auguste Renoir was a far more complex and thoughtful painter than generally assumed.

He was a founding member of the Impressionist movement, nevertheless he ceased to exhibit with the group after 1877.

From the 1880s until well into the twentieth century, he developed a monumental, classically inspired style that influenced such avant-garde giants as Pablo Picasso.

Gaetano Gandolfi | I Disegni

Gaetano Gandolfi (1734-1802) è stato un pittore Italiano del tardo barocco e del primo periodo neoclassico, attivo a Bologna.

Gaetano Gandolfi frequentò l'Accademia Clementina di Bologna, ma su di lui l'influenza determinante fu esercitata dal fratello Ubaldo.

Come studente all'Accademia Clementina ha vinto due medaglie per la scultura e quattro medaglie per i suoi disegni.

Paul Cézanne at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Paul Cézanne | Giocatori di carte, 1890-92

Tra il 1890-1896, Cézanne intraprese un ambizioso progetto di pittura dedicato al tema dei giocatori di carte. Arruolò dei contadini delle terre di famiglia, vicino ad Aix-en-Provence, come modelli.

Basandosi su numerosi studi preparatori, l’artista realizzò cinque composizioni che ampliano, sfidandole, le raffigurazioni tradizionali di questo tema, popolare fin dal Seicento. Pare che questa tela sia stata la prima della serie.

Dopo aver dipinto una successiva versione di grandezza doppia rispetto alla prima che comprendeva una nuova figura, un bambino in piedi, nelle tre versioni seguenti Cézanne eliminò i particolari superflui, raffigurando soltanto due giocatori, che si affrontano a viso duro attraverso il tavolo. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Giovanni Bellini | Madonna and Child, 1470

Artist: Giovanni Bellini (Italian High Renaissance painter, ca.1430-1516)

Date:ca. 1470

Medium: Tempera, oil, and gold on wood

Dimensions: 21 1/4 x 15 3/4 in. (54 x 40 cm) (31 x 26 inches framed)

Classification: Paintings

Current location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This early work by the Venetian painter, Giovanni Bellini, reveals the profound influence of his brother-in-law, the Paduan master Andrea Mantegna, both in the figure types and the inclusion of the garland.

Guido Cagnacci | The Death of Cleopatra, 1645-55

Artist: Guido Cagnacci (Italian, Santarcangelo di Romagna 1601-1663 Vienna)

Date: ca. 1645-55

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 37 3/8 × 29 1/2 in. (95 × 75 cm)

Current location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue in Gallery 637

The subject, from Plutarch's Lives (1st century A.D.), is Cleopatra's suicide by an asp bite following the defeat of her beloved Mark Antony at the battle of Actium.

Henri Fantin-Latour | Summer Flowers, 1880

The inscription in the upper-right-hand corner indicates that Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) completed this painting in September 1880 at the village of Buré in Normandy.

The dahlias, phlox, and roses in the bouquet were picked from the garden of the artist’s country house.

By this date, Fantin had established a steady clientele in Britain for his exquisite paintings of informal flower arrangements, set in modest vases and seen against a neutral ground. | Source: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Henri Fantin-Latour | Summer Flowers, 1880 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Claude Monet | The Parc Monceau, 1878

Monet painted six views of the Parc Monceau: three in 1876 and three in 1878.

In this canvas, the disposition of light and shade in the foreground, the patterns of the leaves, and the broad contours beginning to develop in areas of strong contrast suggest that Monet had already begun to experiment with the boldly two-dimensional motifs that would characterize his work of the 1880s and 1890s. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Claude Monet | The Parc Monceau, 1878 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean-Baptiste Greuze | Broken Eggs, 1756

Broken Eggs attracted favorable comment when exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1757.

One critic noted that the young serving girl had a noble pose worthy of a history painter.

The canvas was painted in Rome, but the principal source may have been a seventeenth-century Dutch work by Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635-1681) - State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, which Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French painter, 1725-1805) would have known from an engraving.

The broken eggs symbolize the loss of the girl's virginity. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

William Wetmore Story | Medea, 1865

In the ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, Medea was the sorceress who assisted Jason in obtaining the Golden Fleece and later became his wife.

When he abandoned her, Medea murdered their two children and planned the death of his new love, Creusa.

To nineteenth-century theater audiences, Medea was a sympathetic character forced to choose between relinquishing her children and protecting them by destroying them herself. Story similarly deemphasized Medea’s revenge, leaving to the viewer’s imagination the scene of infanticide to come. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Georges de La Tour | The penitent Magdalene, 1640

With its extreme contrasts of candlelight and shadow, pared-down geometry, and meditative mood, this painting exemplifies La Tour’s painting at its most accomplished and characteristic.

These visual qualities were a powerful countertrend to Baroque painting’s typical pomp and showiness.

A native of the duchy of Lorraine in eastern present-day France, La Tour was indebted to Caravaggesque painting, but tended toward even more simplified forms.

The quiet atmosphere of this painting perfectly fits the subject, Mary Magdalen, who renounced the pleasures of the flesh for a life of penance and contemplation.

She is shown with a mirror, symbol of vanity; a skull, emblem of mortality; and a candle that probably references her spiritual enlightenment. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Penitent Magdalene, 1640 | Metropolitan Museum of Art