Where would you go to see the range of artistic achievement in Europe from the reign of the Emperor Constantine to the age of Shakespeare? It’s a tough query, though one answer is the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
As is clear from the magnificent new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries (which opened on December 2), the V&A possesses an astonishing range of masterpieces of every kind — metalwork, stained glass, textiles, sculpture, painting, furniture, ceramics, even large chunks of buildings. This cornucopia of objects came from just about everywhere: Spain, Italy, Northern Europe, Byzantium and as far afield as Japan.
Until now, they have been spread over the museum, which is enormous and rambling. There are galleries on the upper floor that scarcely a visitor reaches and, I imagine, a corpse might lie undiscovered among the cases of porcelain. I suspect it’s going to be less quiet in the new galleries, designed by MUMA (MacInnes Usher McKnight Architects) at a cost of 31.8 million pounds ($52.4 million). This is one of the sights of London.
There’s a brand-new zone in what was previously a courtyard between two buildings. It’s now a glass-roofed gallery in which some of the larger architectural exhibits are displayed. Among these is the late Elizabethan carved-oak facade of a house owned by an entrepreneur named Paul Pindar. It used to stand on Bishopsgate, near the present site of Liverpool Street Station.
High Altars
While that’s a spectacular fragment of the Tudor city, next door are yet more eye-popping items, including the complete altar from a chapel in a Renaissance Florentine church, the high-altar chapel of Santa Chiara, perhaps by Giuliano da Sangallo (c. 1494-1500). In addition, there’s a choir screen from ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the southern Netherlands (c. 1610-13), a sculptural and architectural ensemble straight out of the world of Rubens.
It’s an easy mistake to think of Renaissance art in terms only of painting. The leading artists in 15th-century Florence, for example, weren’t primarily painters — at least until Leonardo came along. They were sculptors and architects.
The V&A has one of the best collections of Italian sculpture outside Italy, particularly strong in works by Donatello (c.1386-1466), the originator of much that we think of as typically “Renaissance”.
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In one new room at the V&A, you can see his finest low-relief marble carving, “The Ascension” (1428-30), and two steps away, the relief of the “Virgin and Child With Four Angels” (c. 1450), which Donatello gave to his doctor in thanks for curing him from a grave illness.
Next to that is the bust of the doctor, Antonio Chellini, by Antonio Rosellino (1456), which is one of the finest early-Renaissance portraits in any medium.
Churches and Palaces
What is true of the Renaissance is even truer of Medieval art — it’s not all about painting, nor about any one medium: it’s about the whole ensemble. In many of these 10 new galleries, the V&A puts the various arts back together, and into the context of, say, a Romanesque church or a Burgundian palace.
They also re-integrate the world of the past, putting France, England, Germany and Flanders beside Italy and Spain, and including goods and influences from the rest of the world.
One of the outstanding exhibits is a Japanese screen, representing the arrival of the first Portuguese ships in that region.
It would be impossible, and tedious, to list the numerous outstanding items on display — all beautifully lit and installed. Go see it, and leave yourself plenty of time. To do it justice would take at least a day.