The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond

Dwight Peck's personal website

Winter 2024-2025

A photographic record of whatever leapt out at us

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond

17 March 2025

Kristin's off tomorrow morning at dawn for a 10-day sojourn with son George in Santa Fe, NM, and we're grasping the opportunity to come down to Richmond a day earlier, to experience . . .

. . . this fine art museum that everyone's been banging on to us about. Six years at the other end of the state, and we're finally going for it at last.

The arrangements, it turns out, are basically about individual collections rather than simply a chronological or regional progression through the rooms -- so we'll just wander about, and see what we find.

We've actually come in the back door, so our first agenda item is to locate the lunching facilities.

Educational and fun arrangements for the kids (featuring the 'interactive gallery' and the West Rock Art Education Center)

-- Ummm. Let's go find the lunching facilities first, yeah?

The Cochrane Atrium, leading to two floors above and . . .

. . . a gift shop, which we will explore a little later. First . . .

. . . lunch (in the Best Café)(good, not expensive)

A glance out at the grounds, and somebody lounging about near the pool.

It turns out that we are presently in Richmond's 'Museum District', and the Fine Arts Museum is only one of what's on offer right round here. Like the Museum of History & Culture, the Virginia Association of Museums, and a Sculpture Garden, a Children's Museum, the Branch Museum of Design, etc. (not even mentioning the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Confederate Memorial Chapel).

Up the stairs, and we begin with the Ancients room, with an attractive display of the usual sorts of Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman artifacts, including . . .

. . . this interesting sarcophagus decorated with little kids.

Very good descriptions of the goods, with background, provenance, and what not

A nice black figure amphora

We didn't see an information plaque for this thing, but it's clearly something to do with the Cult of Mithras, the 'mysteries' of which were very popular especially amongst the Roman military from the 1st to the 4th centuries AD. The most important symbolism of the cult was the 'tauroctony', a representation of Mithras killing a sacred bull which formed the centerpiece of every mithraeum.

We ran into one of these recently, a 3rd century mithraeum underneath the Basilica of St Clement in Rome.

We've just segued into a small Egyptian collection. That's certainly impressive.

Ah, back into the Roman floor mosaics room now.

Wait; we consult the little map we've been given. So this is the East Asian room now . . .

. . . which is adjacent to the Saunders Collection of European works, like this interesting portrait of St Paul the Hermit, the first of the desert 'hermit saints' in the mid-3rd century, by Luca Giordano of Naples in the 1680s, showing the realistic effects of the saint's age and hardships.

'Mary Magdalene Renouncing the Worldly Life' (early 1650s), by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo of Seville, with strong influences of Caravaggio and Zurbaran, thematically fully in line with the Counter Reformation doctrine of the Magdalene's remorseful conversion.

We are all familiar with a host of works of the Madonna or famous saints prominently depicted, with a few tiny donors at the bottom gazing up at them. Here the donors seem to be the main message - this is called 'Two Donors in Adoration before the Madonna and Child, and St Michael' (1557-1560) by Giovanni Battista Moroni of Bergamo. The donors are unidentified, and the 'adoration' part isn't immediately apparent.

This 'Portrait of a Lady' (ca.1585) is a representative work by the famous portraitist Lavinia Fontana of Bologna (1552-1614), one of the first female artists to make a healthy living from her work. Whilst she pursued her career, her husband, the Count of Imola, cared for their household and eleven children and served as her agent. The sitter is unidentified, but the info panel here notes that 'this is probably . . . a young Isabella Gonzaga, duchess of Sabbioneta (1556-1637), an influential member of a princely family from Mantua'.

Now we've wandered into some rooms of ceramic sorts of things -- this is a collection of tin-glazed maiolica earthenware from 16th century northern Italy.

This is called a late-Mannerist maiolica 'Pilgrim Flask' of the early 17th century, 'attributed to the prolific Patanazzi family'.

And this is a 'birth salver' celebrating the birth of a child, in this case called 'The Judgment of Solomon' with its dispute over the newborn baby's real mother, a tempera on wood piece dated to ca.1468 and attributed to Giovanni di Ser Giovanni (called 'Lo Scheggia'), a younger brother of the more famous Masaccio.

'The Holy Family with the Infant St John and an Angel' (1495-1500), tempera and oil on wood, by the 'Master of the Naumburg Madonna', known only as a pupil of Ghirlandaio in Florence. We have a weakness for early Madonna/Child pictures with a funny-looking Christ child.

And these two little guys are certainly funny enough looking.

Similarly, this, by the Flemish 'Bruges Master of 1499', is called 'Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints' (1499), and the info plaque describes a large number of symbolic hints throughout of 'the ultimate virtue of the Virgin and her entourage'. The saints are named here as Catherine of Alexandria, Dorothy of Cappadocia, Barbara, and Agnes, though it's not easy to see how they were identified (Catherine hasn't even got her famous torture wheel).

But they do have a funny-looking Jesus, scrawny little tyke.

This Madonna and Child is a mid-15th century altarpiece by Neri di Bicci (1418-1492), who ran a prolific workshop in Florence. The four saints are Florence's four patron saints: from left, Dominic, the Spanish founder of the Dominicans; Zenobius, the first bishop of Florence; Francis, of the Franciscans; and Minias or San Miniato, an Armenian prince [here a king] who served in the Roman army under the Emperor Decius -- he converted and became a hermit near Florence, and when he was beheaded in the Emperor's presence, he picked up his head, crossed the Arno, and walked back up to his hermitage.

'Virgin and Child with Angels' (ca. 1470s), by Giovanni di Paolo (1399-1482). This is possibly the only classic Christ Child who appears to be gibbering.

'Virgin and Child with John the Baptist' (ca. 1540s), by Il Bacchiacca (Francesco d'Ubertini Verdi, 1494-1557), who was born in Florence and studied under Perugino, and is described here as 'a leading painter of the first generation of Mannerist artists', a great favorite of the Medicis and 'responsible for many altarpieces in Florence'.

'Saint Jerome' and 'Saint Paul' (1620s) by the Flemish Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), two of what I recall was meant to be a set of four. Extremely realistic detail in close-up.

We're continuing amongst a number of rooms devoted to European artists, and having such fun.

Speaking of fun, this one is much more of it if you can stand up close to it and relish the details of the dancing and general gaiety, as well as the farm village ambience with the houses and hens. It's by the great Fleming David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690), 'The Village Holiday' (ca. 1650).

This 'Allegory of Marital Fidelity' (ca. 1633) is by the Dutchman Jan Miense Molenaer and, as allegorically interesting as it is, what really stands out for some of us . . .

. . . is the allegorical monkey on his chain, with a doubtful cat.

This is a slightly blown-up part of a huge picture by the Fleming Louis de Caullery (ca. 1610), representing the siege of Troy with Aeneas famously scooting off with his father Anchises on his back, based on the story in Virgil's Aeneid. According to the info panel here, the artist has taken pains to reproduce monuments 'that could be viewed in Rome in his own time'. The initials SPQT on the foreground slab suggests the 'Senate and People of Troy' instead of Rome.

That painting, 'one of the treasures of VMFA's European collection', is by Hubert Robert (1733-1808) and imagines the moment in 1506 when the sculpture of Laocoön and his Sons, described by Pliny the Elder in the 1st century, was rediscovered in a Roman garden. We're told that 'The Finding of the Laocoön' (1773) was influential in helping along the growing interest amongst 18th century art enthusiasts in the pursuit of archaeological excavations.

A grim 'Scene from the Epidemic of Yellow Fever in Cadiz' (ca. 1820), by Théodore Géricault

Gustave Doré's intriguing 'Family of Spanish Poachers' (ca. 1870s)

Uh oh, we've just run out of European rooms.

Pre-Columbian, all very interesting for aficionados

In the next room: a 'Power Figure' from the Songye culture of present Democratic Republic of Congo

A Mbawa mask of the Yaka culture of the 19th century DRC, made by a diviner to represent 'the spirit of the African buffalo'

Oh good grief!

William Bradford (1823-1892), 'Scotch Whaler Working through Ice' (ca. 1878). We're in the American rooms now -- Bradford, from New Bedford, 'made his career depicting the massive ships that plied the Atlantic Ocean'.

'Great Ormes Head, near Liverpool' (1836), by Robert Salmon, an Englishman who settled in Boston in 1828 and specialized in seashore paintings.

On our way for more American paintings (usually a change for me)

'Indian Rock, Narragansett Bay' (1871) by Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837-1908), a New York City artist who really really liked the Narragansett Bay. (So do I, having lived near there for a few years, which is why I've included this here.)

(But I never heard of Indian Rock.)

A beautiful picture of an unknown woman, by Julius Leblanc Stewart: 'Flowers in her Hair' (1900). 'Despite this unfinished state, the painting features a bold, black signature.'

A portrait of a horse, with a sort of owner who doesn't look very likeable at all. John Singer Sargent's portrait of William Marshall Cazalet (1902) -- 'Sargent's bravura style is complicit in conveying the family's social elevation from commerce to land'.

Much nicer: Sargent's 'Venetian Tavern (Venetian Wineshop)', 1902

'Child Picking a Fruit' (1893), by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), which the info plaque says 'merges the subject that made Mary Cassatt famous -- a young woman (possibly a mother) and child -- with her more ambitious examination of 'modern woman', a topical theme' at the time (women's suffrage movement, etc.).

As the sign says, this is a recreation of somebody's rather overstated bedroom, back in the day. 'The room documents Arabella Worsham's transformation from modest circumstances to immense wealth in the fluid social and economic environment of post-Civil War America.' [Oh grand!]

'The Cup of Death' (1885), by Elihu Vedder (1836-1923), inspired by the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam. Vedder, born in New York City, spent much of his life in Italy, some of it on the Isle of Capri, 'then a haven for male aesthetes' [Hunh?].

'The Hour of Prayer at the Pearl Mosque, Agra' (ca. 1888), by the American Edwin Lord Weeks (1849-1903), 'a leading 'Orientalist' painter, illustrator, photographer, writer, explorer, and collector'.

This is very cute. According to the info notes, George P. A. Healy (1813-1894) was an acclaimed midcentury portraitist who is here (in 1874) painting one of his own students, Jennie Byrd Bryan, who is seen painting him as well. Ms Bryan later married John Barton Payne, this museum's founding patron.

Frederic Remington's 'The Pursuit' (1896-98), depicting 'a line of the advancing US 9th Cavalry, an African-American regiment known as Buffalo Soldiers'.

David Johnson (1827-1908) of New York painted 'The Natural Bridge, Virginia' after a visit in 1860 -- we throw this in at the end of our tour chiefly because, as it's not far south of Staunton and Lexington, we visited there as well, not too long ago. Mildly interesting.

Whilst the rest of our party is enjoying the Fabergé collection on the left there, we will sit in the Great Hall, admiring the statue of Septimius Severus standing tall there, and fantasizing about a sumptuous dinner in our hotel's bar tonight.

Before we leave, we need to have a good look round the gift shop for any inexpensive items that might force a big grin to Kristin's grandson's face.

There's quite an interesting range of items for sale here.

-- Where'd we leave the car? Oh, there it is.

The Museum provides a huge parking garage, evidently, but here we are right in front of the back door. Clutching our bag of gifts for little George.

It's not the Prado or the Capodimonte, etc., but it's definitely worth more than a few revisits.

Thank the Great Lord Harry for our GPS, without which we'd never find our way through the city streets to the Sheraton at the outskirts.

That said, we didn't really spend much time looking round in Richmond per se.

Maybe someday.

Next up: Staunton's Thornrose Cemetery and a walk with Kim through the Boxerwood

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