The Metropolitan Museum of Art is doing some renovation works; so what better excuse for its Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art to loan 10 artifacts from its collection to the department des Antiquités Orientales du Louvre for a temporary exhibition that will run until the end of September? Great equally for children and adults: this is small & fascinating exhibition!
The objects that came across the Ocean, cover a period of around 5000 years and the Louvre has put them close to similar objects in its collection. In a very French way, they have called it “Dialogues d’antiquites orientales”. Instead of putting them all in one room, the Louvre has decided to do something much cleverer: they have distributed the objects between room 236 and 308 of the Ground floor of the Richelieu and Sully wings (they had done something very similar last year). This is a very sleek way to incentivize the visitors to survey the whole Near Eastern collection (and in a chronological order to boot); but more importantly, it is a way to provide precious context for each of the artifacts by pairing them with one or more objects from the permanent collection. It covers an area that goes approximately from present day Iran to Siria.
Some of the objects from the Met are exquisite. We have chosen five of them.
The silver auroch is kneeling on his tight robe and holding a cup in its hands. Although aurochs are now extinct, they were a common motif of the time (the Louvre has an older version). The one from the Met is from around 3300 B.C. In the Proto-Elamite art, also known as Susa III, it was common to show scenes from everyday life, but conducted by animals. It is believed that this piece was used during ritual to make noises. Whatever its purpose, it is superb and THATMuse favourite piece from the exhibition.
A head of natural size made of copper from about the 22nd century B.C. Because it is not common to recover bronze pieces of this size and quality from over 4000 years ago, this is the artifact that the Louvre chose to promote the exhibition. There is a bit of debate where this important official’s head is coming from. But the most likely possibilities are from either Tello in Mesopotamia or from Western Iran.
This ceremonial axe interlaces three almost fantastical animals in a lethal combat. On one side, a winged dragon with the body of a lion. On the other, a giant boar. In the middle, a muscular human with a two-headed eagle for a noggin. The axes were a symbol status and are found in the tombs of soldiers buried 2000 years ago. In that time, they believed in a Great Goddess that guaranteed fertility and fecundity. The half-human, half-animal genie in the middle is one of her acolytes and controls the natural forces that destroy the vegetation and checks the water, represented in this axe by the dragon/lion and the boar.
This curved vase with an animal at the end, is called a rhyton and the Louvre has many, especially Greek in the Galerie Campana (these are mainly in ceramic). But unlike most of these that were made for the common people, this rhyton, crafted for kings, is in silver. The cat-looking animal is a caracal, common in the Middle East and Central Asia. The vine grape on top is the obvious symbol of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and debauchery. Alexander the Great had conquered the Persian empire 200 years earlier, on 330 B.C., and the Seleucid Empire that followed him were heavily influenced by Greek art and traditions (something similar happened in Egypt, another of the territories conquered by the Great Greek), including the realistic treatment of the body, as this caracal shows.
Diplomatic gifts are nothing new: ancient cultures used to give them to tighten relationship with foreign kings or ambassadors while also transmitting the idea of their splendour and power. The Sassanids (they dynasty that followed the Seleucids and that were the last Iranian empire before the Muslim conquest) are no different. This silver plate showing a king hunting a deer is from around 400 AD. The king can be identified by the crown. His name was Yazdgird I, and he ruled at the beginning of the 5th century.
Come, bring your kids, and enjoy this exhibition: it is small, crowds-free and THATMuse found if fascinating!
It’s not always easy to be the epitome of serenity and piety. Yet, Sumerian ruler Gudea worked hard to portray these qualities. He even immortalized his calm image in stone! Let’s look at this peaceful Statue of Gudea.
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Bronzino, a mannerist artist, delighted in creating witty paintings with hidden, complex meanings. Bronzino’s Portrait of a Young Man contains many clues alluding to the young man’s identity, you just have to look closely! So, hone your inner Sherlock Holmes and let’s unmask the youth!
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Do you know how the Ancient Greeks dealt with death? Start by looking back to the Geometric period where there’s Hades’ Underworld, elaborate burial rituals, and detailed ancient Greek funerary vases like the terracotta krater!
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Two forms becoming one is Hermaphrodite. With roots in ancient Greek mythology, the tale of Hermaphrodite relates to modern discussions of gender identity and, through sculptural depictions, this figure becomes a beautiful ambiguity everyone can experience.
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Rembrandt is the equivalent of a modern-day selfie connoisseur! As a great 17th century self-portrait artist, Rembrandt’s many artistic ‘selfies’ explore his identity throughout his lifetime. Let’s look behind the camera (or painting for that matter) to find out just why Rembrandt earned the prestigious title of a Selfie King and, while we’re at it, see what his selfie’s can teach us!
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The Mona Lisa is perhaps the most famous painting in the world, one of the most recognised and copied.
It currently hangs in the Louvre, where it is believed that 80% of the 10.2 million visitors go specifically to view the masterpiece. Brewminate suggest it was painted sometime between 1503 and 1519, and it is Leonardo Da Vinci’s seminal work that set a standard for artists that have come since.
The perspective might not seem unique today, but it set a precedent that many portrait artists began to adopt. The sitter’s position mostly turns toward the viewer, which broke convention in Italian art at the time. Now, it is the most commonly used portrait profile, which only adds to the paintings allure and influence.
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Did you see Stephanie Blaser’s Impressionism-inspired feast when we posted it a few weeks ago? She shared recipes for fish in foil, accompanied by a side of summer vegetables, roasted in the oven, and both inspired by Impressionist paintings.
Delicious! But we can’t help thinking that it left us just a little hungry for dessert…
Well, long-time friend of THATMuse, Élodie has us covered with this recipe for madeleines, inspired by Francois Boucher’s painting, Family Taking Breakfast. Yum!
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For as long as there has been VR technology, there have been half-excited, half-scaremongering think pieces proclaiming that a new age of tourism has begun. Physical tourism is out, and “virtual tourism” is in. Well, we haven’t quite reached the stage where a vacation mean a trip to the living room. We haven’t given up on visiting museums in favour of touring them with only a VR headset.
But, since we’re all more or less marooned at home at the moment, it is useful to know that museums have, apparently, been preparing for the apocalypse all along. From basic functions allowing you to explore museum collections online using their websites to fully-fledged virtual museum tours, there is a way to see all five of our museums online, from the comfort of your own home.
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Ever heard of the terrible 5th century Plague of Athens? Over 2400 years later we’re living though another dreadful health crisis. How did the Greeks handle theirs? And is coronavirus comparable to the many illnesses that have hit the world so far? Historians and art-historians like us love to say that the past always teaches us something. Some stories, like that of the Plague of Athens, are timeless, and we can learn from them even today.
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This post is also available in Italian!
In ancient Greek society people carefully followed the social rules of good behaviour. Women had to be good mothers. Kids and youths went to school, to the gym and were trained to be brave warriors. The elder ones inspired the new generations with their wise advice. And everyone prayed to the gods during the religious festivities. There was a time though, when almost everything was allowed and when social rules of good behaviour could be forgotten: the symposium. Museums are filled with vases showing symposiasts having fun and playing, precisely because the Greeks, like the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, the Chinese and the Anglo-Saxons, often buried their dead with games (or scenes of games), in order to allow them to have fun during their afterlife.
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