NYC – Metropolitan Museum of Art: Armor for Man and Horse

A few nice Museums images I found:

NYC - Metropolitan Museum of Art: Armor for Man and Horse




Image by wallyg

Armors for Man and Horse
dated 1548
Kunz Lochner (German, ca. 1510â€"1567), German (Nuremberg)
Etched steel, leather

Kunz Lochner was one of the few Nuremberg armorers of the mid-sixteenth century to achieve an international reputation. His patrons included the Holy Roman Emperor, the dukes of Saxony, and the king of Poland. The man's armor displayed here bears the mark of Nuremberg; Lochner's personal mark, a rampant lion; and the date 1548. The armor was originally part of a small garniture that included exchange elements for field and tournament use. Restorations include the cuirass and the gauntlets.

The horse armor bears only the Nuremberg mark but can be attributed to Lochner on stylistic grounds. The elaborately embossed and etched decoration of the peytral (chest defense) includes an abbreviated inscription that may be interpreted: 1548 K[rist] I[ch] T[rau] G[anz] V[nd] G[ar] H[ans] E[rnst] H[erzog] Z[u] Sachsen (1548 In Christ I trust wholly Hans [Johann] Ernst, Duke of Saxony). Duke Johann Ernst (1521â€"1553) may have commissioned the horse armor for his attendance at the Diet of Augsburg, a political assembly of the German nobility called in 1548 by Charles V to deal with the crisis of the Reformation.

Man's armor: Bashford Dean Memorial Collection,
Gift of Mrs. Bashford Dean, 1929 (29.151.2)
Horse armor: Rogers Fund, 1932 (32.69)

**

The collection of armor, edged weapons, and firearms in The Metropolitan Museum of Art ranks with those of the other great armories of the world, in Vienna, Madrid, Dresden, and Paris. It consists of approximately 15,000 objects that range in date from about 400 B.C. to the nineteenth century. Though Western Europe and Japan are the regions most strongly represented--the collection of more than five thousand pieces of Japanese armor and weapons is the finest outside Japan--the geographical range of the collection is extraordinary, with examples from the Near East, the Middle East, India, Central Asia, China, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and North America. The Arms and Armor Galleries were renovated and reinstalled in 1991 to display to better effect the outstanding collection of armor and weapons of sculptural and ornamental beauty from around the world.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's permanent collection contains more than two million works of art from around the world. It opened its doors on February 20, 1872, housed in a building located at 681 Fifth Avenue in New York City. Under their guidance of John Taylor Johnston and George Palmer Putnam, the Met's holdings, initially consisting of a Roman stone sarcophagus and 174 mostly European paintings, quickly outgrew the available space. In 1873, occasioned by the Met's purchase of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriot antiquities, the museum decamped from Fifth Avenue and took up residence at the Douglas Mansion on West 14th Street. However, these new accommodations were temporary; after negotiations with the city of New York, the Met acquired land on the east side of Central Park, where it built its permanent home, a red-brick Gothic Revival stone "mausoleum" designed by American architects Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mold. As of 2006, the Met measures almost a quarter mile long and occupies more than two million square feet, more than 20 times the size of the original 1880 building.

In 2007, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was ranked #17 on the AIA 150 America's Favorite Architecture list.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1967. The interior was designated in 1977.

National Historic Register #86003556

NYC - Metropolitan Museum of Art - Annual Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche




Image by wallyg

From November 20, 2007 through January 6, 2008, the Metropolitan Museum of Art continued a long-standing holiday tradition with the annual presentation of its Christmas tree in the Medieval Sculpture Hall. A vivid 18th-century Neapolitan Nativity sceneembellished with a profuse array of diminutive, lifelike attendant figures and silk-robed angels hovering aboveadorns the candlelit spruce.

The exhibit of the crèche was made possible by gifts to The Christmas Tree Fund and the Loretta Hines Howard Fund.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art's permanent collection contains more than two million works of art from around the world. It opened its doors on February 20, 1872, housed in a building located at 681 Fifth Avenue in New York City. Under their guidance of John Taylor Johnston and George Palmer Putnam, the Met's holdings, initially consisting of a Roman stone sarcophagus and 174 mostly European paintings, quickly outgrew the available space. In 1873, occasioned by the Met's purchase of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriot antiquities, the museum decamped from Fifth Avenue and took up residence at the Douglas Mansion on West 14th Street. However, these new accommodations were temporary; after negotiations with the city of New York, the Met acquired land on the east side of Central Park, where it built its permanent home, a red-brick Gothic Revival stone "mausoleum" designed by American architects Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mold. As of 2006, the Met measures almost a quarter mile long and occupies more than two million square feet, more than 20 times the size of the original 1880 building.

In 2007, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was ranked #17 on the AIA 150 America's Favorite Architecture list.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1967. The interior was designated in 1977.

National Historic Register #86003556