25. UCCELLO, Paolo
Portrait of a Lady (detail)
1450s
Oil on canvas, 39 x 26 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
26. VELÁZQUEZ, Diego Rodriguez de
Silva y
Infanta María Teresa
1651-52
Oil on canvas, 34,3 x 40 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York
27. VELÁZQUEZ, Diego Rodriguez de
Silva y
Infanta María Teresa (detail)
1651-52
Oil on canvas, 34,3 x 40 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York
28. cast Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York_Picture Gallery, The Masterpieces, (Part 2)
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VELÁZQUEZ, Diego Rodriguez de
Silva y
Infanta María Teresa (detail)
1651-52
Oil on canvas, 34,3 x 40 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York
29. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is the most comprehensive
collection of art in the USA and one of the greatest in the world.
It was founded in 1870 and the present building in Central Park was opened in
1880. The museum is owned by the city, but is supported mainly by private
endowment, and the history of its foundation and growth illustrates the rapid rise
of New York at the end of the 19th century as the financial and cultural capital of
North America, and the growing economic supremacy of America over Europe.
Between 1880 and 1925, at a time when the major public collections in Europe
were engaged in consolidation, relying largely on their purchase grants and
other state aid, the Metropolitan Museum was being built up out of the private
fortunes of great businessmen, who collected rather for prestige than out of
connoisseurship, but collected only first-class works of art.
It has also benefited from a number of endowed purchase grants, many of them
unconditional, which have enabled it to progress not only as a collection of
outstanding works, but as a comprehensive and representative one.
30. The museum is rich in virtually every field of the fine and applied arts from all
parts of the world and also houses one of the world's largest art libraries.
Much of the collection of medieval art is housed in a separate building called
the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park, overlooking the Hudson River. Opened in
1938, the Cloisters is a Medieval-style structure, largely made up of parts of
Romanesque and Gothic buildings transported from Europe. Many of the
works it houses were collected by the American sculptor George Grey
Barnard (1863-1938), who lived in France for much of his career.