Bayerisches Nationalmuseum Exhibits Cleveland Museum Treasures

Written by Steve Scoggins Monday, 22 August 2011 21:35

MUNICH, GERMANY - The Cleveland Museum of Art is currently in the process of erecting a further extension and renovating the existing buildings.  This offered the unique opportunity to display one of the most significant collections of the museum at the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich.  The museum’s holdings of Western art from the third through to the 16th centuries have been a particular strength from the opening of the first building in 1916. They rank today among the most important in the United States.  Artistic quality, rather than documentary or historical significance, has always been the guiding principle of acquisition.  All works were donated or financed by private sponsors.

The objects on display range from the Early-Christian Jonah marbles of the third century and Egyptian textiles from the 4th to the 7th centuries to a large Hunting-Scene by Lucas Cranach, lavishly decorated books and 16th century armor.  The exhibition includes five of the famous objects from the Guelph Treasure, bought by the museum in 1930-31, as well as four mourners and one out of only two surviving panel paintings from the Carthusian monastery of Champmol, the burial place of the great Dukes of Burgundy.

It also features precious objects from Byzantium, jewellery from the migration period, the only extant complete example of a 14th century table-fountain, the well-known Annuntiation from the Sachs collection, the Adoration of the Magi by Giovanni di Paolo, a renowned Christ and St. John sculptural group, a statuette of the Mourning Virgin by Veit Stoß, or a alabaster figure by Tilman Riemenschneider.  The exhibition continues a tradition of close professional exchange that has connected the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum for sixty years.

Visit the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum - Prinzregentenstraße 3 - D-80538 München - www.bayerisches-nationalmuseum.de/