 The Freer Gallery works--never loaned--were therefore not among the paintings represented in the large Whistler show.
A number of interesting shows concentrated on manuscript illumination. Italian book illustration was the focus of an exhibition in London at the Royal Academy of Arts and later on view in New York City at the Pierpont Morgan Library. The show, entitled "The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illustration 1450-1550," included 137 superb examples covering such diverse themes as classical and humanist texts, liturgical and biblical manuscripts, and patrons of the Italian Renaissance. The show, which was organized by subject rather than chronologically, encompassed a very wide range of beautiful objects and covered a subject less well-known than other examples of Italian Renaissance painting.
Some 100 items, including painted panels and manuscript illuminations, were included in the exhibition "Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Illuminated manuscripts were also displayed in a series of exhibitions at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, Calif. One show running in late winter and early spring featured animal mythology and included illustrations of fables and games.
"The Art of Devotion" at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam comprised 44 works--paintings, prints, books, sculpture, and objects in gold and silver--some of which were borrowed from foreign collections. Most were made in monasteries to be used by monks for private devotion and were therefore relatively small. Most of the images and objects, which dated from 1300 to 1500, were portable, and a series of miniature prints could easily be carried within the pages of a book. Objects from the show were displayed in darkened rooms and illuminated in isolated cases that were lit in such a way that the contents seemed to float in space.
An exhibition devoted to the 15th-century Flemish artist Hans Memling was enormously popular when it was shown in late 1994 in Bruges, Belgium. The show consisted of 88 paintings (nearly half were attributed to Memling) and a subsidiary exhibition comprising textiles, manuscripts, and goldwork from this period. Aside from Memling’s works, there were copies of lost works and works by his predecessors, followers, and contemporaries. The Louvre, Paris, also held a show celebrating Memling’s quincentenary, with an exhibition drawn from French museums and pieces loaned from Italian and Dutch collections.
An exhibition focusing on 16th-century French drawings from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris was shown there and later at both the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show featured glasswork, silver work, and examples of decorative architectural projects. Though the emphasis of the show was on the school of Fontainebleau, there were many works by little-known artists, including some exquisite miniatures. Architectural drawings also were well represented.
An exhibition, "The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943-1968," at the Guggenheim Museum was devoted to Italian art after World War II. More than 1,000 items drawn from this seminal era of Italian art and covering an important period in Italian history included objects related to photography, crafts, fashion, and film. Parallels were drawn between the works of such filmmakers as Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, and Vittorio De Sica and images created in the other arts, including the designs of both Fiat, the Italian automobile manufacturer, and architect Gio Ponti.
The exhibition also noted, through the work of such artists as Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana, the important influence of the Futurism movement, which emphasized the power of the machine and the restlessness of modern life in general. The show highlighted the inventive and sometimes experimental use in both painting and sculpture of such everyday material as industrial-waste products and wire mesh.
The paintings and sculptures of the period, somewhat unusually, were probably less well-known, particularl