"In . . 1348 the deadly plague broke out in the great city of Florence . . Whether through the operation of the heavenly bodies or because of our own iniquities, which the just wrath of God sought to correct, the plague had arisen in the east some years before, causing the death of countless human beings. It spread without stop from one place to another until, unfortunately, it swept over the west . . Such was the cruelty of heaven and to a great degree of man that between March and the... More »

Across West Africa, people from rural and urban communities consult diviners about medical, psychological, professional, or other personal challenges. Such specialists typically undertake extensive training that prepares them to understand complex problems in people's lives, prescribe medicinal remedies, and offer other suggestions. Successful diviners at once master knowledge of the landscape, develop abilities to communicate with the spiritual world, and create aesthetically rich... More »

During the twentieth century, outside commentators defined poro (or lô) as a universal age-grade initiation association common to all Senufo communities in West Africa. They also attributed much of the region's artistic production to the institution. Based primarily on observations made in areas of northern Côte d'Ivoire, scholars, colonial administrators, and missionaries emphasized that Senufo boys from different lineages passed through a series of initiation stages before... More »

West African power associations are responsible for an array of arts, including masks, sculptures, and performances. The arts of kómó and kónó, two predominantly male institutions, have captured the attention of museum audiences in Europe and the United States. Communities across western West Africa support the two organizations and many others, including several belonging to women. Although they are primarily concentrated in communities of Mali, Burkina... More »

In 1978 and 1979, the collection at the Museum of Primitive Art (MPA) was transferred to the Metropolitan Museum, where it became the latter's foundation for its African art holdings. Nelson A. Rockefeller had established the MPA in 1954 in association with René d'Harnoncourt, then director of the Museum of Modern Art. The two men appointed the art historian Robert Goldwater as director of the MPA in 1957, in part due to Goldwater's groundbreaking doctoral studies some twenty years... More »

Musical instruments and musical expression take an almost infinite variety of forms throughout the world. This is especially true in Oceania, whose more than 1,800 different peoples create an astonishing variety of musical instruments. Made and used throughout the Pacific, musical instruments play integral roles in contexts ranging from religious rites to secular entertainment. Oceanic musical instruments include many of the broad categories familiar in the West, such as percussion, wind,... More »

Among the Hudson River School artists, John Frederick Kensett is the acknowledged master of the mode termed "luminism" in American landscape painting. He was born in Cheshire, Connecticut. By 1828, Kensett was employed in his father's engraving firm in New Haven, then briefly apprenticed with the engraver Peter Maverick in New York, where he met his lifelong friend and future colleague John W. Casilear. However, the death of Kensett's father in 1829 occasioned the artist's return to New... More »

During the second quarter of the eighteenth century, the bold turnings, attenuated proportions, and exuberant ornament of the early Baroque or William and Mary style were subdued in favor of gracefully curved outlines, classical proportions, and restrained surface ornamentation. This new style, variously called late Baroque, early Georgian, or Queen Anne, was a blend of several influences, including Baroque, classical, and Asian. Boston was the leading colonial city in the early eighteenth... More »

The New York Dutch Room comes from a house built in 1751 in Bethlehem, New York, for Daniel Pieter Winne (1720–1800). The woodwork demonstrates the reliance on traditional Netherlandish building practices in late colonial New York. Dutch immigrants began settling the Hudson River Valley in the early seventeenth century but continued to construct houses and barns much as they had in the Netherlands through the end of the eighteenth century. The New York Dutch Room is presented as a... More »

From the seventeenth through mid-nineteenth centuries, Japanese citizens of all classes wore the kimono—a simple T-shaped robe constructed with minimal cutting and tailoring—wrapped around the body and held in place with an obi sash. In order to carry small items such as tobacco, medicine, and seals, ingeniously constructed sagemono (a collective term for "hanging things") were suspended on cords that hung from the obi sash (29.100.841). Stacked, nested containers, known as... More »

Charles Rettrew Sheeler Jr. was born in Philadelphia in 1883. His education included instruction in industrial drawing and the applied arts at the School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia (1900–1903), followed by a traditional training in drawing and painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1903–6). At the Academy, he studied with William Merritt Chase, a prominent American Impressionist (67.187.123). He visited Europe with his fellow students in 1904–5, and... More »

The three decades that followed the formation of the United States are referred to as the Federal era in recognition of the early development of the national government. The style of houses and furnishings created during this period was heavily influenced by the Neoclassical designs favored in Great Britain since the 1760s, which stemmed from a renewed interest in classical Greece and Rome. The interiors discussed below are from houses built in the Federal period in Haverhill, Massachusetts;... More »

During the late nineteenth century, a number of forces transformed the European avant-garde design scene. Two in particular played an important role: a reaction against the prevalent taste for academic historicism; and the rediscovery of the arts of Asia, in particular Japan, after trade was reestablished in 1853. Machine-produced pastiches of historical styles were increasingly shunned in favor of new designs that derived forms and decorative motifs from nature. Designers also began to... More »

The story of Sienese painting in the wake of its brilliant founder, Duccio di Buoninsegna (active ca. 1278–d. 1318), is a complicated one. As Duccio's fame spread and his innovations in style, composition, and painterly technique became more widely known to his contemporaries, a flurry of artists rushed to capitalize on the new developments. Of these artists, only a few exist whose names have survived along with their paintings, and there are many others who remain anonymous. To try to... More »

In 330 A.D., the first Christian ruler of the Roman empire, Constantine the Great (r. 306–337) (26.229), transferred the ancient imperial capital from Rome to the city of Byzantion located on the easternmost territory of the European continent, at a major intersection of east-west trade. The emperor renamed this ancient port city Constantinople ("the city of Constantine") in his own honor (17.190.1673–1712); it was also called the "New Rome," owing to the city's new status as... More »

The acknowledged dean of American landscape painters following the death of Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand exemplified the fresh ideal of naturalism for the second-generation painters that came to be called the Hudson River School. Born in Jefferson Village (now Maplewood), New Jersey, Durand first worked for his father, a watchmaker and silversmith, before apprenticing with the engraver Peter Maverick in Newark, from 1812 to 1817. In the latter year, he became Maverick's associate and... More »

An aquamanile (pl. aquamanilia), from the Latin words for water (aqua) and hand (manus), is an animal- or human-shaped vessel for pouring water used in hand washing, an essential component of religious and secular rituals in medieval society. The hundreds of surviving examples attest to their popularity during the Middle Ages. Some pottery aquamanilia—made for a more humble clientele—survive, usually in fragments, but most extant aquamanilia were cast in copper alloy... More »

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, the most admired—perhaps the greatest—European painter who ever lived, possessed a miraculous gift for conveying a sense of truth. He gave the best of his talents to painting portraits, which capture the appearance of reality through the seemingly effortless handling of sensuous paint. Born in Seville, the son of a lawyer of Portuguese origin, he began a six-year apprenticeship in 1611 with the painter Francisco Pacheco, whose... More »

Between the eve of the American Revolution and World War I, a group of modest British colonies became states; the frontier pushed westward to span the continent; a rural and agricultural society became urban and industrial; and the United States—reunified after the Civil War under an increasingly powerful federal government—emerged as a leading participant in world affairs. Throughout this complicated, transformative century and a half, American painters recorded everyday life as... More »