Metropolitan Museum Journal 2000 Volume 35

NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. — 244 p.The Metropolitan Museum Journal is issued annually by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Its purpose is to publish original research on works in the Museum's collections and the areas of investigation they represent.
Contributions, by members of the Museum staff and other specialists, vary in length from monographic studies to brief notes. The wealth of the Museum's collections and the scope of these essays make the Journal essential reading for all scholars and amateurs of the fine arts.
Journal 35 opens with an article that identifies
possibly the earliest workshop thus far known in
Greek pottery, based on an examination of a
Geometric-period pedestaled krater in the Museum's collection. Three precious objects receive scrutiny: a gold crossbow fibula of late 5th-early 6th century date presented in the historical context of such fibulae and in a close technical analysis of its openwork decoration; an enameled gold watch of ca. 1600 in the form of an ensign of the Order of the Garter; and a Dutch silver psalter cover identified here by its original contents, an early 17th-century book of Psalms. The carved works examined include an Umbrian 12th-century marble portal with a brief review of its iconography; a wood statue of Saint Roch, whose origin is attributed to the Lower Rhenish town of Kalkar, ca. 1500; and an elaborate life-size wood bust that most likely depicts the powerful Russian soldier Alexander Menshikov. Chinese, French, and American works on paper and canvas inspired studies: the historical context of a painting attributed to Guo Xi examined through poems by his contemporaries about his intimate landscape handscrolls; attributions of drawings in the Museum's collection restored to Hubert Robert; portraits by Ingres revisited in a postscript to the recent exhibition; studies that Dagnan-Bouveret made for his Pardon in Brittany at the Metropolitan
demonstrating the complex working methods of this naturalist painter; and the mountain depicted in an Autumn Landscape by Jasper F.
Cropsey correctly identified.
KEVINJ. AVERYAssociate Curator, American Paintings and Sculpture
KATHARINE BAETJER
Curator, European PaintingsJAMES DAVID DRAPER
Henry R. Kravis Curator, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
JULIE JONESCurator in Charge, Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas
JOAN R. MERTENS
Curator, Greek and Roman Art