Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure From the Palaces of Europe
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
“In titling a museum exhibition, it is always risky to include words whose meaning and even pronunciation will consternate half of the visitors,” said James Gardner in The New York Sun. “Pietre dure” in fact refers to the Renaissance practice of arraying hard, colored stone—such as marble, onyx, chalcedony, or lapis lazuli—somewhat in the manner of wood marquetry. But you needn’t know that to enjoy the “riotous polychrome feast” of tables, cabinets, clocks, and other decorative objects in the Metropolitan Museum’s “oddly charming” exhibition. Perhaps the most eye-catching objects are the two-dimensional artifacts “that behave like paintings, even though they are fashioned from cut stone.” View of the Pantheon (1797) is a realistic Roman scene based on a painting by Ferdinando Partini. Lines and shadows in both versions are identical, but in the pietre dure rendition they “have been translated into a brittle and bracing visual staccato.”
Remarkable patience was needed to create these works, said Dan Bischoff in the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger. Stones of proper color and quality had to be scrupulously selected, then carefully carved, polished, and placed. Pietre dure “is in fact a form of sophisticated sculpture, in many ways more difficult than direct carving in marble.” That level of difficulty, as well as the stones’ innate worth, made these works highly valuable even in their own time. Many of the “most impressive” ones here were commissioned by European royalty, including the chrysoprase snuffbox for Frederick the Great and an enormous cabinet featuring an image of Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine. Treasures of the Royal Court is not only an excellent introduction to a little-known art but “the summer’s most magnificent” exhibition of decorative wonders.
-
August 10 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday's political cartoons include a global plastics problem, GOP enthusiasm over tariffs, and more
-
5 thin-skinned cartoons about shooting the messengerCartoons Artists take on unfavorable weather, a look in the mirror, and more
-
Is Trump's new peacemaking model working in DR Congo?Talking Point Truce brokered by the US president in June is holding, but foundations of a long-term peace have let to be laid
-
If/Thenfeature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
-
Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
-
Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
-
The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
-
Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
-
The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
-
No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
-
The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.