Late Medieval and Renaissance Art at the Gardner Museum in Boston

During a recent trip to Boston, I visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. I had been there once over 20 years, and had a vague recollection of the place--enough to remind me that a return trip was necessary.

Though unassuming from the outside, once you enter the Gardner Museum, you are basically stepping into an Italian villa from the 17th century, complete with central courtyard and cloisters. Beyond the gorgeous architecture, the museum houses a first-class collection of artworks from around the world. Frankly, I had forgotten how stunning the collections are, particularly the impressive holdings of Catholic religious works from the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.

Here are a few photos I took, representing a tiny fraction of the museum's works on display. Please forgive the quality--I went in the evening, so the lighting wasn't great. While these photos don't convey the full experience of visiting this utterly gorgeous edifice, tucked neatly in among some fairly ordinary-looking buildings less than half a mile from Fenway Park, they should be tantalizing enough to entice a visit, no?

Click to enlarge any of these.

Effigy of a knight, tomb sculpture from Salamanca, Spain, ca. 1500.

French altarpiece showing scenes from the Passion of Jesus, ca. 1425.

German statue of St. George
slaying the dragon, ca. 1500.

Risen Christ. Date unknown
(to me, anyway).

The Virgin and Child by Bernardino Pinturicchio, Italian, 1494.

Flemish tapestry from the story of Abraham,
late 16th century.

Saint Engracia, Bartolomé Bermejo, Cordova,
Spain, 1474.

The Resurrection, German or Austrian, 16th century.

Though not Medieval or Renaissance,
here is Ms. Gardner as portrayed by
John Singer Sargent in 1888. She was
48 years old at the time.

Book Review: Brunelleschi's Dome

No, this isn't a book about an Italian guy with a big head, although Filippo Brunelleschi certainly had a massive ego. Brunelleschi's Dome is about the city of Florence generally during one of the greatest periods of genius and creativity in human history. It is also, specifically, about the life of Filippo Brunelleschi, a classic genius of the Italian Renaissance, and his magnificent dome which dominates the skyline of Florence to this day. Like so many of his contemporaries, Brunelleschi had a high level of expertise in a variety of fields. He was an artist, an engineer, a craftsman, an historian, and an overall solver of impossible problems. He was also a bit of a whack-job whose failures were nearly as spectacular as his successes.

With this book, Ross King has penned an engrossing popular biography of Brunelleschi, as well as a history of the construction of his famous dome. While the book goes into some detail regarding the engineering behind the construction of the dome, the prose is never heavy and is written so that the layman, such as myself, never gets bored or lost.

My wife and I visited Italy in 2000 and climbing to the top of the Duomo was one of the high points (literally!) of the trip. I wish I had read this book beforehand! I therefore highly recommend it to anyone who is planning a visit to Florence. It will give you that much more appreciation for the amount of work--and genius--that went into the construction of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.