New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently showing the spiritual side of two Italian masters.
In an exhibition entitled Personal Encounters, four private devotional paintings by Piero della Francesca are on display until March 30. In addition to the works by the great Umbrian-born artist, the Met is exhibiting the last seven works by the neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova, appearing for the first time in the United States.
Canova is renowned for his refined but sensuous mythological nudes, such as Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss and The Three Graces (at the Louvre and the Victoria and Albert Museum, respectively). This exhibit, The Last Seven Works, (running until April 27) displays a lesser-known, spiritual side in the last years of the Venetian artist’s life.
The seven full-scale plaster models, which depict scenes from the Old and New Testaments, were made as part of a project for Tempio Canoviano, the neoclassical church that he designed in his hometown of Possagno, which later became his mausoleum.
