I’ve been to the Met probably a handful of times, but I don’t think I’d ever explored the Renaissance rooms before, partially because it’s such a large and fascinating museum that it’s almost impossible to see everything you want to, and partially because there are other styles and time periods that I would prefer to spend my limited time at the museum viewing. That said, there were quite a few paintings in the rooms we visited that struck me for one reason or another. Not being a visual artist, my responses were generally caused by emotional rather than technical reasons, but I feel that I was still able to impart more than superficial meaning from the works.
The first one that struck me was the large Ruebens work, Wolf And Fox Hunt. Despite taking a course in Art History during my senior year of high school, I was completely unaware that collaboration on paintings had been relatively commonplace in the North during that time period. Since this course began I have become interested in the process of artists (dancers, musicians, actors, painters), and I am curious as to how Ruebens and his collaborators were able to create such an impressive and seemingly cohesive piece of art, despite the fact that there were probably differences in style and ability within the workshop. That this was not an extremely uncommon phenomenon I found especially impressive, since collaboration can be one of the most difficult and frustrating experiences for anyone, particularly when it is collaboration on a piece of art, with all of the emotional involvement that entails. It is the same reason I am somewhat amazed by the ability of musical groups who write and compose their own music can sometimes be capable of sustaining that creativity and unity throughout decades.
A second painting that stood out to me, this time because of its subject matter, was Jacob Jordaens’ Holy Family With St. Anne and The Young Baptist and His Parents. The painting drew me in because it is one of the few scenes of the Holy Family that I have seen where everyone looked like a family. While definitely of the period, and far from super-naturalistic, the relationships between the young Jesus and his immediate and extended family members were actually believable, and strikingly human. Most depictions of Jesus and his family focus on depicting them as divine and supernatural. While Christian theology certainly emphasizes this, there is also an element of the Holy Family that is supposed to have been very natural and human–they lived and acted and felt as all humans do. This painting could have depicted any gathering of loving family members, whether or not they are meant to have been divine, a relatively unique approach for an artist of any period to take.
The third painting that I was especially fascinated by was another Ruebens, albeit a very different kind of painting from the one our guide showed us. The work, entitled A Forest At Dawn With A Deer Hunt, is a small landscape. The only people you can find are hidden in the well-shadowed forest. The entire work is almost entirely focused on the trees, and the sunset in the upper left hand corner provides the only in-painting light. To be honest with you, I would never have said that this work could have been done by Ruebens, not because of any lack of skill in the painter or the painting, but because it is just so divergent from what I had thought was his typical work. This work piqued my curiosity regarding Ruebens, because it revealed another side of him as an artist, one that I personally find to be even more engaging than the Ruebens that creates giant masterpieces focused on conveying dramatic actions or human personality.
Zoe Johnson
