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The grounds of the Ringling estate in Sarasota include a fabulous art museum (mostly European art of the 15th-19th centuries), the Ca’ d’Zan (home of John and Mable Ringling), and two buildings dedicated to the circus (this is “Ringling” as in “Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus). Since moving to Florida, we’ve visited the Cummer Museum in Jacksonville, the Dali Museum in St. Pete, Vizcaya in Miami, and the Ringling in Sarasota. The Ringling has by far the best quality and quantity of art from Western Europe.

John Ringling (1866-1936) decided to build a museum in Sarasota in 1925, commissioning John H. Phillips to design it. The museum is a U-shaped building whose twenty-odd galleries enclose a formal garden. Many of the rooms were designed for pieces of architecture that Ringling purchased in the United States and Europe. Ringling bequeathed the museum to the people of Florida.

A great gate tells you something marvelous is inside.

Having a lifesize copy of a famous Greek sculpture in the forecourt never hurts, either.

In Florida it’s practical to have high ceilings, so the heat can rise. Few of them are as spectacular as this one, the entrance hall to the Ringling Museum.

If you turn right from the entrance hall, you enter two rooms displaying five huge canvases by Rubens. These were painted as models for a set of tapestries, but they’re stunning works in their own right. Rubens had at his disposal nearly all the innovations that painters have devised over the millennia: even when I don’t feel an affinity to his subjects, I love looking at his work. (See Innovators in Painting.)

These two rooms were designed specifically to display the five Rubens canvases. The plaster putti above each painting echo elements of the paintings. The twisting “salomonic columns” that flank the doorways leading into the third gallery are adapted from architectural elements in several of the paintings. (More on Rubens at the end of this post.)

Among the features about the Ringling that I like very much: you can get glimpses of upcoming galleries full of more gorgeous works; and none of the gallery walls is stark beige. I used to assume that beige would make the colors of the paintings pop, but the highly saturated colors of the Ringling’s walls make being there a more vivid experience. It also makes the museum feels like someone’s personal collection that I want to explore at leisure, rather than an institution whose collection I ought to be working my way through.

Below: a portrait bust, probably from Renaissance Florence. (I couldn’t find a label.) I’ve seen a lot of artworks in the “Sweet Style” from 15th-century Italy (e.g., here) … But this woman looks like she’s got character rather than sweetness.

The Siege of Naples by Alfonso I, 1460s

The work above was painted in the almost-out-of-fashion medium of tempera and gold on wood. Panels of this shape were often attached to cassone, chests that held a bride’s goods when she was married. Close-up views below.

The Siege of Naples reminds me of Uccello’s Battle of San Romano, ca. 1435-1460 (i.e., only slightly earlier), which is famous for its use of linear perspective. See, for example, the lances on the ground in this image. But not everyone said “yeehaaaaaw!” and jumped on the Renaissance art bandwagon. The battle scene in the Ringling, with its crowded figures and flattened depth, looks less Renaissance than medieval. (For more on the innovations that took place in 15th-century Italy, see Innovators in Painting, Chapters 18-26.)

Building of a Palace, ca. 1515-1520

Oil on wood. This fascinating work illustrates the process of constructing a building in the early sixteenth century: materials are brought to the site at left, and they’re cut and shaped at the right. The nearly complete palace is at the rear. The palace is in the classical style, as most Renaissance buildings were, but has not been identified with any particular building in Florence.

Lettuccio, Florence, ca. 1508?

In Florence during the Renaissance, a day bed was one of the most prominent pieces of furniture in a couple’s home, and was often elaborately decorated. This lettuccio with symbols of the Strozzi and Medici families was possibly created for a wedding of members of those families in 1508. Below: a close-up of the remarkably fine workmanship.

Fasolo, Family Group, ca. 1565

Fasolo painted potraits in and around Venice. The vivid faces and details on this one remind me of works such as Titian’s Man with a Red Cap at the Frick. Titian was one of the greatest Venetians. (Well, that’s easy to remember, isn’t it?) Incidentally, look at the fabulous brocade on the gallery wall.

Cairo, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, ca. 1633-1637

It’s a tricky business to show a hero who has conquered danger without giving too much space to the bad guy. This woman’s gaze is so mesmerizing that it was a moment before I noticed the sword handle in her hand, and even longer before I noticed Holofernes’s head at the lower left. (If you were a man, you’d be thinking at this point: “OK, better not hit on this woman.”) This artist was influenced by Caravaggio, who pioneered the technique of zooming in on his subjects and using dramatic lighting, which forces us to focus on expression and gesture. Yes, of course you can read about that in Innovators in Painting. More on this painting is here, and a slightly more in-focus photo of it is here.

Rubens, The Flight of Lot and His Family from Sodom, ca. 1613-1615

As I said above, Rubens had at his disposal nearly all the innovations that painters have devised over the millennia. Even when I don’t feel an affinity to his subjects, I love looking at his technical mastery. And in this case, I do feel an affinity for a person who’s looking longingly back at a place he can no longer live in.

Rubens shows a wide range of emotions: see the faces below. He builds on the superb knowledge of anatomy at rest and in motion that artists had been compiling for two centuries. I could get lost in the details of texture here (fabric, metalwork, angel wings, spaniel) … except that Rubens doesn’t let me. One of his major innovations was dialing back details so that they don’t distract from the human figures. And then there’s the glowing skin: it seems to be surprisingly difficult to achieve that effect. Rubens is one of the few who does it. (See – you guessed it – Innovators in Painting.)

More

• I’ll be continuing my series on the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, in an few weeks. The Ringling is so vivid in my mind right now that I don’t want to postpone writing about it.
• 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. Getting More Enjoyment from Paintings You Love is in the works.
• Want wonderful art delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my free Sunday Recommendations list and rewards for recurring support: details here.