The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings

Galitz, Kathryn Calley (2016)

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Read an interview with Kathryn Calley Galitz on Now at the Met.

BIGNY Book Show, Winner (2017)

Publication Details

Description

This monumental new book is the first to celebrate the greatest and most iconic paintings from the encyclopedic collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, one of the largest, most important, and most beloved museums in the world.

This impressive volume's broad sweep of material, all from a single museum, makes it at once a universal history of painting and the ideal introduction to the iconic masterworks of this world-renowned institution. More than 1,000 lavish color illustrations and details of 500 masterpiece paintings, created over 5,000 years in cultures across the globe, are presented chronologically from the dawn of civilization to the present. These works represent a grand tour of painting from ancient Egypt and classical antiquity and prized Byzantine and medieval altarpieces, to paintings from Asia, India, Africa and the Americas, and and the greatest European and North American masters.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art includes and introduction and illuminating texts about each artwork written specially for this volume by Kathryn Calley Galitz, whose experience as both curator and educator at the Met makes her uniquely qualified. European and American artists include Duccio, El Greco, Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, Bronzino, Caravaggio, Turner, Velázquez, Goya, Rubens, Rembrandt, Brueghel, Vermeer, David, Renior, Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Degas, Sargent, Homer, Matisse, Picasso, Pollock, Jasper Johns, and Warhol.

The artworks are arranged in rough chronological order, without regard to geography or culture, offering a visual timeline of the history of painting, from the earliest examples on pottery jars made over five thousand years ago to canvases on which the paint has barely dried. Freed from the constraints imposed by the physical layout of the Museum, the paintings resonate anew; and this chronological framework reveals unexpected visual affinities among the works. For those wishing to experience the unparalleled breadth and depth of the Met's collection, or study masterpieces of painting from throughout history, this important volume is sure to become a classic cherished by art lovers around the world.

Table of contents

Foreword
Painting through the Ages
Acknowledgments

Before 1450

1450–1750

1750–1900

After 1900

Select Bibliography
Index of Works
Photograph Credits

About the authors

Scholar, author, and lecturer specializing in European art, Kathryn Calley Galitz works at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where she has been both an educator and a curator of major international exhibitions on artists including Courbet, Turner, and Girodet.

Press reviews

Bookforum

"Succeeds magnificently in evoking a global art history…presented in a way that only a physical book could accommodate: eye-filling reproductions in a stylish package of more than five hundred pages, nicely bound…will delight the casual page flipper but it will also entrance art-book aficionados…consistently evokes illuminating connections and gives readers room to discover them"

Library Journal

"This grand and lavish pictorial guide to the wonders of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is an essential art purchase. With exquisite reproductions, it offers a sweeping tour through the museum’s painting collection, showcasing 500 masterworks."

Wall Street Journal

"Expanding the definition beyond pigment-on-canvas…beautiful reproductions."

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