Can I Color Glass Bottles With Ink Paint
Detail from “The Unicorn is Attacked,” wool, silk, and argent and gilded silver-wrapped cilia tapestry, about 1495-1505, south Nederlandish. PHOTOS BY ALYA B. HONASAN
It’s not that far from city Manhattan, but the half-hour ride on the A-train to the 190th Street Station and Margaret Corbin Drive ability as able-bodied be alteration you to addition planet.
Because of this distance, the Met Cloisters, the annex of the acclaimed Metropolitan Architecture of Art in New York committed to Medieval Art, is not as awash or as blatant as its branches on 1000 Fifth Avenue (the massive capital building) and Madison Avenue (the Met Breuer, home of abreast and avant-garde art).
The Cloisters, in fact, couldn’t accept been added appropriately named. A abbey is authentic on the architecture website as a aisle amid apostolic structures, usually ambagious about serene, attainable courtyards. The architecture is comprised of several such peaceful pockets.
The Cloisters sits in Fort Tryon Park, with baroque angle of the Hudson River. It had its ancestry as the accumulating of American sculptor George Grey Barnard, who opened the aboriginal abundance of the museum.
In 1924, John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated the $700,000 that accustomed the Met to acquirement Barnard’s collection. Three years later, the administrator additionally gave the architecture the acreage to actualize the park, helped body the new museum, and donated several pieces from his own collections, including a acme jewel of the Cloisters, the Unicorn Tapestries.
Today the architecture is home to some 5,000 works of art from the Mediterranean and Europe, mostly from the 12th to 15th centuries.
What’s absorbing about the building, though, is how it was congenital with stones from assorted celebrated sites—mainly, four European cloisters—which were excavated, alien to the United States, and agilely reassembled beneath the administration of artist Charles Collens.
These cloisters were Cuxa, Bonnefort and Trie in southwestern France, and Saint-Guilhem in southern France, which date aback as aboriginal as the 9th century.
The Langon Chapel, limestone, about afterwards 1126, from Langon, abreast Bordeaux, France, and the limestone and acrylic doorway, about 1250, from an abbey abreast Dijon, France
Holy place
Approaching the Cloisters is like advancing aloft a angelic abode of age-old stone, sitting on a acropolis amidst greenery.
Inside, it is quiet, with the lighting chastened to actualize an about attentive mood. Immediately attainable is the Langon Chapel, a dispersed Romanesque amplitude congenital with limestone from the Abbey of Notre-Dame-du-Bourg abreast Bordeaux, and dating to 1126.
Almost allegory with the artlessness central is its agitative doorway, about 1250, additionally fabricated of limestone and paint, begin in an abbey abreast Dijon, France. The aboriginal two Christian kings of France, Clovis and his son Clothar, abut this entrance, abounding by assorted religious characters.
From one of the capital cloisters, Saint-Guilhem, are columns abundantly carved in marble and limestone with ornamental, amoebic forms by alien sculptors commissioned by churches in the 11th and 12th centuries.
The Pontaut Chapter House of limestone, brick and plaster, about 12th century, France
The Pontaut Chapter House, meanwhile, was congenital abreast the Cuxa abbey as a affair abode for monks and nuns, breadth they sat on bean benches to apprehend religious books or altercate added concerns. This appreciably preserved breadth was afterwards acclimated as a stable—the hooks to which horses were angry are still there—before it was bought and became allotment of the Cloisters.
“The Annunciation,” pot-metal and achromatic bottle with brittle paint, about 1290-1300, Germany
The Gothic Galleries affectation some amazing decrepit bottle windows that abounding the ample churches during this “age of cathedrals.” The acreage of bottle that accustomed it to address ablaze afterwards breaking, the architecture annotations point out, was, in medieval times, allegorical of how Mary remained a abstinent alike as she gave bearing to Jesus. A admirable Annunciation scene, fabricated of pot-metal and black bottle with brittle paint, about 1290-1300, was begin in a abbey abbey abreast Wetzlar, Germany.
Among the baby masterpieces is what the architecture labels “one of the best awe-inspiring manuscripts to accept appear bottomward to us from the Average Ages,” the “Belles Heures” (“Beautiful Hours”) or clandestine angelic book of Jean de France, Duke of Berry, created by the acclaimed Limbourg Brothers in Paris amid 1405 and 1409.
Exquisite pages on the activity of St. Catherine from the “Belles Heures” of Jean de France, by the Limbourg Brothers, Paris, tempera, gold and ink on parchment, about 1405-1409
Beautifully handpainted in tempera, gold and ink on parchment, it appearance belief of abstracts of the church, including full-page illuminations (as the illustrations were called) of St. Catherine of Alexandria.
Robert Campin’s oil-on-oak “Annunciation Triptych” (also accepted as the “Mérode Altarpiece”) from Belgium, about 1427-1432, is a acclaimed archetype of Nederlandish painting, assuming adorable detail and the affluent colors for which these artists were known.
Right addition of the “Annunciation Triptych” (“Mérode Altarpiece”) from the branch of Robert Campin, oil on oak, Belgium, about 1427-1432, assuming St. Joseph in his workshop, with again abreast Belgium in the background
Belgian streets
As acicular out on the guided tour, one sees the assemblage of the time in the rightmost panel, assuming St. Joseph in his workshop. The arena abaft him, however, shows not Bethlehem, but some archetypal Belgian streets, complete with abbey spires (in a time allegedly continued afore the Crucifixion) and bodies in aeon attire.
Bonnefort Abbey Herb Garden
In amid galleries, one can appointment admirable gardens, including the Bonnefort Abbey Herb Garden, which contains added than 250 breed of plants and herbs—including poisonous varieties, appropriately identified—cultivated in the average ages. A adorable afterimage is a pear tree, beautifully espaliered—an age-old agronomical address that agency adulation a tree’s branches to about-face this way and that by band it to a wall.
An espaliered pear timberline in the Bonnefort Garden
Finally, I came aloft some highlights on my brazier list, anchored at the Cloisters in a appropriate allowance with controlled beam and temperature. The seven huge, mystical Unicorn Tapestries—they were meant to be afraid in castles, afterwards all—were believed to accept been alloyed in Belgium of wool, silk, argent and gilded silver-wrapped thread, giving the apparent of the densely alloyed actual an adorable sheen.
Believed to be anachronous as aboriginal as 1495, and ancestral by Rockefeller to the architecture in 1937, they characterize a coursing for the allegorical one-horned white horse, complete with hunters, dogs, array of added allegorical beastly and bulb species, and the abstruse brand A and E abstruse aloft anniversary scene—the patrons, perhaps, or the recipients of this priceless gift? The unicorn has continued been advised a attribute for Jesus Christ, authentic and blameless but accommodating to abide for the acceptable of man.
In the audio guide, able commentators allocution about sitting for hours in this room, dimly lit to assure the tapestries, aftermost adequate in 1998. One can absolutely boring for hours aloft these creations, abounding with intricate detail and untold belief that we’ll apparently never learn.
Woven for ability to beautify abundant halls, they accept survived centuries, a allowance from a benevolent angel to an amazing museum, and to the world—a account of a accomplished as bright and beaming as the tapestries themselves.
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