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| William Blake, The Ancient of Days, 1827? © The Whitworth, The University of Manchester |
The pandemic scrambled museum exhibition schedules, especially in Los Angeles. One apparent casualty was a major William Blake exhibition that the Getty co-organized with the Tate. It ran in London Sep. 2019 to Feb. 2020 before lockdown prevented its travel to L.A. "William Blake: Visionary" is now back on
the Getty Center schedule for Oct. 17, 2023, through Jan. 14, 2024.
The Getty is also organizing a Giacomo Ceruti exhibition with Fondazione Brescia Musei. Ceruti is admired for hyperreal paintings of 18th-century society's outcasts. (The Getty bought
two still lifes by the artist last year.) "Giacomo Ceruti: A Compassionate Eye" will run July 8 to Oct. 29, 2023.
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| Giacomo Ceruti, Two Beggars, 1730-1734. Fondazione Brescia Musei, Brescia |
Comments
Now you're talking. A show dedicated to Giacomo Ceruti is exactly the kind of new art historical ground-breaking that US museums should be striving for. And he's definitely not a "kitchen-magnet" artist that so many museums seem to retread time and again.
His work hasn't been the subject of a focused exhibition since the show in Brescia in 1987.
He's got a superb portrait at the Met, "A Woman with a Dog" from the 1740s:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435864
And if you take a quick glance that the Ceruti painting posted in this blog [Two Beggars, of 1730-1734, coll. Fondazione Brescia Musei], you wouldn't be blamed for thinking it was a work by the Brothers Le Nain, whose work predates Ceruti's by a century.
The Met notably lacks a Le Nain, although there was a jewel-like copper shown at the Met years ago after a major rehang. Thankfully, that picture is a promised gift to the Met, and it's brilliant in every respect. Here is the Met's on-line entry for that piece:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438779