Sculpture in the Age of Donatello (Museum of Biblical Art)

The first time I walked past (and noticed) the Museum of  Biblical Art on Broadway in the Lincoln Center district, I paused and allowed myself to imagine what “art” such an institution would house and who would wander its galleries.  I imagined a refuge for the midwestern tourist overwhelmed by Times Square a few blocks south, filled with artwork somewhere between the creationist museum dioramas tossing Brontosauri and humans into the same line of vision and the Vatican’s never-ending galleries of nineteenth-century sentimental schlock

I broke with my long-held prejudices when I read about the museum’s current exhibit, Sculpture in the Age of Donatello.  This exhibit comprises not plaster copies of “Renaissance Masterpieces from Florence Cathedral,” but the the marble statuary and reliefs removed in the nineteenth century from the Duomo in order to save them from the deteriorations of weather and pollution and preserved  in its museum. A century and a half later, they have been removed from the museum while it is renovated, and its only non-Italian venue during this period is the MoBiA.

While the exhibit fills only one, rather small, gallery, the artwork held our attention for over an hour.  The exhibit was predominately sculpture by Donatello, Nanni di Banco, and Luca della Robbia, that was commissioned during the final years of the cathedral’s construction.  The most moving pieces were the monumental six—two that sat on either side of the front doors, and four that stood inside.  My favorite of these was Nanni di Banco's St. Luke, the contemplative, purposeful intellectual whose mien felt more reassuring than the near-mad ecstasy of the adjacent St. John.

It was odd to see in New York works that I did not see when I was in Florence in 2010.  It was odder to be allowed so close to them, to see how narrow front to back the imposing large pieces were.  The depth provided by the high relief of folded robes and muscular arms and torso belied the small piece of cathedral real estate granted the sculptors, speaking material terms to the  transformation they helped effect in art.  

Highly Recommended: show ends 14 June 2015, and the museum itself closes soon thereafter.