Taking a Closer Look

 

For today's post, I'm taking a closer look at some of the art works that were part of an exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art or LACMA for short.  This particular exhibit contained works that were part of the museum's collection and were all gifted to the museum.  

First up is "Flying Mercury", a bronze that dates from around 1580.  

This gorgeous sculpture was given to the museum by Lynda and Stewart Resnick in 2015 as a gift to the museum on its 50th birthday.  

Isn't that a magnificent sculpture?  

Next up is this incredibly beautiful piece called the "Onians Cabinet".  Its origin goes back to Naples Italy around 1600.  It is made from exotic woods with ebony, ivory and steel.  

The details on this piece are beautiful.  It came to the museum from the Estate of Ernest Onians who passed away in 1995.  I was curious about who Onians was so I did a search that led me down a rabbit hole of fascinating information.  He was an art collector from Suffolk in England who was not your usual art connoisseur.  If you are interested, check out this story written by Onians' great niece.  It's a fascinating account of an unusual collector and what happens to his collection after he was gone.  The short account tells a tale of how even expert art appraisers from Sotheby's can miss a a very valuable work of art.

The next piece I examined more closely was this lovely cabinet called the Pietre Dure Cabinet.  Apparently "Pietre Dure" means hard rocks and represents a type of art popular with the Medici family of Florence. Pietre Dure art creates pictures formed from semiprecious stones fitted together so tightly the seams are barely visible to the eye.  This piece contains 19 pictorial panels depicting birds and flowers.

I'm not sure why I didn't take a close up photo of one of those gorgeous panels.  Instead I was attracted to the gold statues at the top of the cabinet.  

These last two pieces in the exhibit appealed to me because of the exquisite beauty of the fabrics and the details of the embroidery work.  These are also the only pieces that my research could find no record of.  I believe they are chasubles but I can't be certain.

I let my camera take a closer look at the impeccable weaving of one of the garments.  You can even see the faces of what look like angels.  

So that concludes my 'closer look' at some great works of art.  I enjoy researching these items as much as I enjoy seeing them in person.  I'm glad I took the photos to remind me to do the research.