By Katie Potzick
This spring the Speed Art Museum will become one of only four museums in the U.S. to house the exhibit “Medieval and Renaissance Treasures from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.”
This fascinating exhibit includes 35 masterpieces from the Renaissance and Medieval Ages the pinnacle of which is an actual journal of famed painter and inventor Leonardo da Vinci.
The journal is a notebook on mathematics and geography written in da Vinci’s special form of mirror image cursive. Da Vinci is known as the quintessential Renaissance man and is famous for paintings such as the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper.
Other pieces in the exhibit include stained glass, bronze sculptures, jeweled metalwork and carved ivory known as “Treasury Arts” that were used for home and church decoration. Some highlights according to www.speedartmuseum.com include an extremely rare Holy Water bucket made for the Ottoman Emperor in the late 10th century; the only Byzantine statuette of the Virgin and Child to be carved entirely in the round.
The exhibit also includes works by Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi, or Donatello, the sculptor who carved the statue of David.
“Medieval and Renaissance Treasures” is more than just artifacts and Speed is hosting events and lectures to commemorate this once in a lifetime exhibit. Thursday, January 17 at 6 p.m., Dr. Christopher Fulton, associate professor of Art History at the University of Louisville, will discuss the city of Florence during the Renaissance.
On Tuesday, January 22 the exhibit will open with a ribbon cutting ceremony at 10 a.m. and at 6 p.m. there will be a special exhibition lecture “Medieval and Renaissance Treasures in Context: The Bigger Picture” given by Dr. Paul Williamson, Keeper of Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics and Glass for London’s V&A.
Lonna Versluys, Speed’s curator, relayed just how exciting and prestigious this exhibit is for the museum.
“We are quite proud to host the exhibit. After Speed it will be going on to the Met in New York. It really is quite extraordinary that we are able to showcase it and do so before the Met.”
The acquisition of the exhibit is an example of how far the museum has come in recent years and the excellent reputation it is beginning to gain in the art world.
Before “Medieval and Renaissance Treasures” Speed housed two other prestigious exhibits; in 2000 “Rembrandt to Gainsborough” from England’s Dulwich Picture Gallery, and in 2002 “Millet to Matisse” from Glasgow’s distinguished Kelvingrove Art Gallery. Both of these exhibits paved the way for “Medieval and Renaissance Treasures” and the esteem of this exhibit alludes to even greater ones in the future of the museum.
