At the Met in New York, five centuries of European painting in a new light

Five centuries of European painting in a new light: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York reopens on Monday its wing devoted to masters from the 14th to the 19th century after five years of renovation, for 150 million dollars, of rooms and exterior lighting of age.

More than 700 Dutch, Flemish, French, Italian, Spanish and English masterpieces — by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Poussin, Caravaggio, El Greco, Velázquez, Goya and David — have been hung up and put back on display on the walls of the 45 galleries of the permanent exhibition “Look Again: European Paintings 1300-1800”.

The Met has “one of the largest collections of European paintings in the world,” boasted the institution’s director, Max Hollein, during a presentation to the press.

For this Austrian, art historian at the head of one of the richest museums on the planet thanks to its donors, the exceptional renovation of this wing of European painting, enthroned on the first floor of the building’s monumental staircase, “testifies to the philanthropy of New York and of New Yorkers looking to Europe.”

The work was essential as the Met has been losing visitors since 2019. Dating from 1939, renovated in the 1950s, the glass roofs letting in natural light were in poor condition.

From 2018 to recent days, all the rooms topped with ceilings pierced by skylights have been repainted, reorganized chronologically and re-lit for 150 million dollars of work.

“Perfect light” thanks to the natural lighting of the renovated glass roofs and the artificial lighting of LED ceiling lights, according to Mr. Hollein.

The gigantic museum – of Beaux-Arts architecture from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and located on Fifth Avenue on the edge of Central Park – has “the largest collection outside of Europe of Dutch art from the 17th century and Greco and Goya outside Spain.

The Met has also just acquired paintings by women artists or portraits representing them, such as this still life by the Flemish painter Clara Peeters from the 17th century, and the portrait of an Indian woman by the British William Wood at the end of the 18th century. century during the colonization of India.

In addition to masterpieces by Dutch and Flemish masters – Vermeer, Rembrandt, Bruegel the Elder – jewels of Venetian painters of the Renaissance, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Canaletto compete with Caravaggio, Poussin , The Dwarf, Velazquez.