New York’s Met and Morgan Keep Old Florence Vs. Rome Rivalry Alive

 
A fascinating little piece in the New York Times today looks at the once-contentious relationship between the Renaissance arts scenes of Florence and Rome through two current exhibitions just a few neighborhoods away from each other in Manhattan. While Rome is represented in one corner by the Morgan Museum & Library’s Rome After Raphael exhibition, which features a slew of Roman sketches including drafts by Raphael and Michelangelo, while The Metropolitan Museum of Art steps into the ring with a new look at the drawings of Florentine painter Agnolo di Cosimo, known to the world as Il Bronzino. We could get into the ins and out, the tos and fros of the tension between these two Italian cities, one a church town and one a banking town, who both reached out to the countryside and beyond to fuel their local lusts for art—but Karen Rosenberg has done the work for us. All we can suggest is that you read on and then make an afternoon of visiting both sites–and for a closer look at Rome, pick up Art+Travel Europe, which tours the Eternal City through the art of Caravaggio.

Rome After Raphael
Now through May 9, 2010
The Morgan Library and Museum
225 Madison Avenue
New York, NY, U.S.A.
(212) 685-0008‎
www.themorgan.org
 
The Drawings of Bronzino
Now through April 18, 2010
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
5 5th Avenue
New York, NY, U.S.A.
(212) 396-5089‎
www.metmuseum.org
 
“A Window Into the Turbulence of 16th-Century Rome” [NYT]  
Images: Left to right, “Study for a Portrait of a Seated Man”, Bronzino, (ca. 1535), on loan to the Met from the Uffizi, Florence; Study of Michelangelo’s “Dream of Human Life”, Giulio Clovio, (ca. 16th century), from the Morgan’s permanent collection.