The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Bulletin
The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Bulletin
The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Bulletin
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Fra Angelico (Guido di Pietro)<br />
Italian (Florentine), active by 1417, died 1455<br />
A Bishop Saint<br />
Tempera on wood, gold ground<br />
6/4 x 6 /8 in. (I 5.9 x I 5.6 cm); diameter <strong>of</strong> painted tondo,<br />
57/8 in. (I4.9 cm)<br />
Bequest <strong>of</strong> Lucy G. Moses, 1990<br />
1991.z7.2<br />
This tondo <strong>of</strong> a bishop saint, the first certain work by Fra<br />
Angelico to enter the <strong>Museum</strong>, is reputed to have come from<br />
the church <strong>of</strong> San Domenico at Fiesole, where the artist served<br />
his novitiate. In all likelihood it is from the frame <strong>of</strong> an early<br />
Gothic polyptych that is still in the church, although greatly<br />
transformed by Lorenzo di Credi in the early sixteenth century.<br />
About 1827 the predella panels-much admired by Vasari in<br />
568-were sold to the Prussian consul in Rome; they are<br />
now in the National Gallery, London. Perhaps at the same<br />
time a series <strong>of</strong> saints decorating the frame were excised and<br />
sold. <strong>The</strong>se include two standing saints in the Musee Conde,<br />
Chantilly, a damaged tondo in the National Gallery, London,<br />
and the <strong>Museum</strong>'s bishop saint.<br />
<strong>The</strong> mid-I4zos in Florence was a time <strong>of</strong> enormous change.<br />
Masaccio began the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel in 1425,<br />
and the same year Ghiberti turned his attention to the second<br />
set <strong>of</strong> bronze doors, the so-called Gates <strong>of</strong> Paradise, for the<br />
Florence Baptistry. It is Ghiberti's shadow that falls across Fra<br />
Angelico's early work, including this exquisitely wrought figure<br />
<strong>of</strong> a bishop saint, whose right hand, raised in blessing, is<br />
conceived like one <strong>of</strong> Ghiberti's elegant bronzes.<br />
KC<br />
Provenance: Probably San Domenico, Fiesole.<br />
Ex coll.: Possibly Samuel Rogers, London (before I856); Canon Sutton,<br />
London; [Langton Douglas, London, before i9z8]; Mr. and Mrs.<br />
Henry L. Moses, New York (by I9z8-6i); Lucy G. Moses, New York<br />
(1961 -90).<br />
Bibliography: Martin Davies, National Gallery, London: <strong>The</strong> Earlier<br />
Italian Schools, London, i96i, pp. 31-3z; John Pope-Hennessy, Fra<br />
Angelico, New York, I974, p. 227; Umberto Baldini, "Contributi<br />
al'Angelico: il trittico di San Domenico di Fiesole e qualche altra<br />
aggiunta," in Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Ugo Procacci,<br />
Milan, I977, pp. 236-245.<br />
Peter Paul Rubens<br />
Flemish, 1577-1640<br />
A Forest at Dawn with a Deer Hunt<br />
Oil on wood<br />
z4'/z 3 5 / in. (6z.2x 90.z cm)<br />
Purchase, <strong>The</strong> Annenberg Foundation, Mrs. Charles Wrightsman,<br />
Michel David-Weill, <strong>The</strong> Dillon Fund, Henry J. and Drue Heinz<br />
Foundation, Lola Kramarsky, Annette de la Renta, Mr. and Mrs.<br />
<strong>Art</strong>hur Ochs Sulzberger, <strong>The</strong> Vincent Astor Foundation and <strong>The</strong><br />
Peter Jay Sharp Foundation Gifts; <strong>The</strong> Lesley and Emma Sheafer<br />
Collection, Bequest <strong>of</strong> Emma A. Sheafer, and <strong>The</strong>odore M. Davis<br />
Collection, Bequest <strong>of</strong> <strong>The</strong>odore M. Davis, by exchange; Gift <strong>of</strong><br />
George R. Hann, in memory <strong>of</strong> his mother, Annie Sykes Hann,<br />
by exchange; Gifts <strong>of</strong> George A. Hearn, George Blumenthal,<br />
George H. and Helen M. Richard and Mrs. George A. Stern and<br />
Bequests <strong>of</strong> Helen Hay Whitney and John Henry Abegg and<br />
Anonymous Bequest, by exchange; supplemented by gifts and<br />
funds from friends <strong>of</strong> the <strong>Museum</strong>, i990<br />
I990.196<br />
This superb landscape <strong>of</strong> about I635 rounds out the finest<br />
group <strong>of</strong> Rubens paintings in America: with twelve works by<br />
Rubens, <strong>The</strong> Feast <strong>of</strong> Acheloiis by Rubens and Jan Brueghel<br />
the Elder, and ten pictures either from Rubens's workshop or<br />
copied after him, a landscape by Rubens has long been considered<br />
one <strong>of</strong> the most desired acquisitions for the Dutch and<br />
Flemish collection. A Forest at Dawn is the first finished<br />
landscape by Rubens in this hemisphere and is probably the<br />
last to be available for decades.<br />
For nearly zoo years this picture was in the collection <strong>of</strong><br />
Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn (1772-1840) and his descendants,<br />
at Llangedwyn Hall, Wales. Previously it was in the Lansdowne<br />
collection, auctioned in London in i 8o6. <strong>The</strong> catalogue entry<br />
("the Sun... darting its fierce Rays from behind a Wood, in<br />
that richness <strong>of</strong> vivid splendor that art can seldom describe")<br />
is accompanied in one copy by the notation <strong>of</strong> the collector Sir<br />
Abraham Hume: "This picture... belonged to Sir Joshua<br />
Reynolds... bought by Sir W. W. Wynne [sic] for 3 zo0." <strong>The</strong><br />
only known owner before Reynolds was Rubens; it is described<br />
in the 1640 inventory <strong>of</strong> his estate.<br />
Rubens's late landscapes were <strong>of</strong>ten painted for his own<br />
pleasure and have been connected with his purchase, in I635,<br />
<strong>of</strong> Chiteau Het Steen. Various interests-nature, Titian, and<br />
Pieter Brueghel the Elder-are embraced by Rubens in paintings<br />
such as A Forest at Dawn, where he treats the subject as an<br />
encounter <strong>of</strong> elemental forces-<strong>of</strong> light and darkness, life and<br />
death, growth and decay. With this concept <strong>of</strong> creation Rubens<br />
extended the imaginary, sometimes mystical tradition <strong>of</strong> Northern<br />
landscape and gave his essentially realistic scenes a sense<br />
<strong>of</strong> myth and metaphor.<br />
WL<br />
Overleaf<br />
39