I’ve posted earlier on my five favorites from the Gardner Museum (see here), but those were chosen from artworks I found on the Net. In August 2020, I visited the Gardner for the first time in decades. The introduction to this series is here. For all posts on the Gardner, click “Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum” in the tag cloud. The Gardner’s site is here.

In this post, the photos precede my comments. Isabella, who didn’t put labels on the works in her collection, would probably approve.

Titian Room

On the Titian Room, see this page on the Gardner’s site.

Above: Here Isabella’s love of Italian art intersects with her love of textiles. She’s used an Italian frame, ca. 1500, to display a piece of elaborate velvet woven ca. 1625-1650 in Italy or Spain. The frame probably originally held a devotional painting such as Botticelli’s Madonna and Child in the Long Gallery (see below).

Above: For centuries, Christ on the road to Calvary was shown surrounded by spectators. See here, for example. In the early sixteenth century, Giovanni Bellini pioneered a new type of devotional image: narrowly focused and intense. This painting of ca. 1505-1510 (a copy of one of Bellini’s works by a student or follower) shows Christ on the road to Calvary – but only his face and a small part of the cross. This was Isabella’s favorite painting. She often placed a vase of violets in front of it, and the museum’s staff has carried on the tradition.

Above: Giovanni Battista Moroni, Portrait of a Man, 1576. Moroni, like Bronzino, did Mannerist portraits that showed sitters as elegant and aloof.

Above: Silver chalice, Italian, late nineteenth century. When Isabella bought it, it was attributed to the Florentine artist Benvenuto Cellini, 1500-1571. Even if it’s not by Cellini, it’s fascinating to look at.

Above: The Gardner is unusual among American museums in that its fittings are all worth looking at: the lighting fixtures, the windows, the walls, the ceilings. I haven’t found an attribution for this sconce on the Gardner’s site. Perhaps it was custom made for the museum: I don’t see how a wrought-iron sconce centuries old could be adapted for electricity.

The Long Gallery

Above: Sandro Botticelli, Virgin and Child with an Angel, 1470-1474. This is a lovely example of the “Sweet Style,” which we’ve seen in several other works at the Gardner. The style arguably reached its peak in Madonna and Child paintings by Botticelli, who did many such paintings early in his career. Look at the exquisite shaping and shading of the Madonna’s face, and the transparency of the her veil. This remains one of my favorite paintings at the Gardner.

Above: Sandro Botticelli, The Nativity, ca. 1482-1485. I don’t like this one as much as Botticelli’s Madonna and Child with Angel, but it’s an interesting composition. It takes considerable skill to fill the space of a circular painting in a satisfying way. (Michelangelo did it better in the Doni Tondo.)

Above: Matteo Civitali, Virgin Adoring the Child, ca. 1480. Mutual admiration society.

Above: By a much later imitator of Antonio Rossellino, Virgin and Child, before 1888. Rossellino (1427-1479) worked in the Sweet Style. The Gardner’s site doesn’t state whether Isabella bought this in the belief that it was Rossellino’s work rather than a later imitation. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with buying an imitation, if you know that’s what you’re buying and like it anyway. But selling a forgery as an original work is a very different matter. See this essay in my series on the business of art.

Chapel

Above: Isabella, a devout Anglo-Catholic, installed a chapel in her palazzo. Its centerpiece is a Gothic stained-glass window from the Cathedral of Soissons. Every year on Isabella’s birthday (April 14), a memorial service is held here.

Third Floor Passage

Above: in the third-floor passage, Isabella exhibited part of her collection of Japanese and Chinese screens and doors.

Gothic Room

Above: Giotto, The Presentation of the Christ Child in the Temple, ca. 1320. Few of Giotto’s paintings are in the United States. This small one, barely 17 inches square, is from a series of seven paintings on Christ’s life that are scattered in museums in America and Europe. One of Giotto’s innovations was the use of dramatic pose and gesture, as seen, for example, in his Lamentation and his Kiss of Judas. In the Gardner’s painting, it’s illustrated on a smaller scale in the way the Christ Child reaches toward his mother. In most paintings of this subject, he’s just a well-behaved bundle. (On Giotto, see Innovators in Painting, Chapter 15.)

Above: Closing out this series on the Gardner is a portrait of Isabella by John Singer Sargent, completed in 1888. Isabella said she rejected eight versions of her face before she was satisfied. The painting, in a room with Gothic painting and fragments of Gothic architecture, has its own religious overtones: the design behind Isabella’s head is strongly reminiscent of a halo. On the other hand, the décolleté of the dress apparently caused a ruckus, as had Sargent’s 1884 depiction of “Madame X“. Isabella’s husband asked her not to put the work on display while he was still alive. The Gothic Room was not opened to the public until after Isabella’s death. In the photo at the top of this section, you can see this painting in the far right corner.

More

• In Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love, I demonstrate a method for looking at sculptures in detail, in depth, and on your own. Learn to enjoy your favorite sculptures more, and find new favorites. Available on Amazon print and Kindle formats.
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