JIM DRAPER: I'm Jim Draper, long-time curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. And you are entering one of our most magnificent spaces in the museum. This is a patio that was built in the early sixteenth century for a nobleman in the south of Spain, Pedro Fajardo. The town is called Vélez Blanco. This nobleman had made a great career in the service of the Spanish king, and this fortress town was given to him as a royal gift.

Let's come on into the room, and you get a quick taste for the sumptuous marble carvings. Fajardo hired teams of Italian marble sculptors from the region of Lake Como to come down and carve these marbles in the native stone.

LUKE SYSON: They decorated the window frames along the wall with scrolling leaves and “grotesques” inspired by ancient Roman carvings. The doorway directly opposite, as well.

JIM DRAPER: And they made up drawing books of these motifs and took them with them down there to Spain.

LUKE SYSON: We’re not sure how the patio was originally used, though it once held a well. Today, the castle it came from is completely gutted. And before it came here, the donor, George Blumenthal, installed the architectural elements in his New York townhouse in 1913.

JIM DRAPER: Not everything in here is from that castle. The Singing Gallery opposite the columns is from a church we don't know. And the portal below it is probably from an altarpiece in Pisa.

LUKE SYSON: Today, the courtyard is used to house an important collection of Italian Renaissance sculptures with space enough for you to walk around and view them from every side. And beneath the arcade, in the corner of the gallery, a staircase leads up to the balcony. There, you can hear about Spanish art, and get a dramatic view of the Vélez Blanco patio from above.