My experience in Art History class has been quite bland, with much of the interest (if any at all) being sparked by the beautiful artworks being displayed through a projector on a messy, poorly lit screen. I haven’t been to a museum in a few years, and when I recently went to the Metropolitan Museum on the 29th of September, I understood why—time, effort, and my addiction to knowledge and beauty. Although I spent nearly an hour-and-a-half there, I wanted to stay longer, yet if I did, the tiny tremors forming in my empty stomach would debase the experience. One exhibition drew the longest amount of time during my stay and left me gazing for a solid twenty minutes—”Moses and the Brazen Serpent and the Transfiguration of Jesus” by Cristobal de Villalpando.
Although the size of the artwork is what’s least impressive (not to diminish the brilliance of that aspect), it certainly makes the experience more immersive and grandiose. The artist, Cristobal de Villalpando, is a highly venerated Spanish painter who emerged in the 1680s. He takes some of his technique from the German painter Peter Paul Rubens, of whom I’ve studied in my Art History lectures.
This piece actually depicts two different biblical events in one continuous canvas painting. It is divided by the lower half—the rectangular canvas—and the upper half—the semicircular canvas. The lower half illustrates Moses’s conjuration of the Brazen Serpent to heal the ill-fallen Israelites while the upper half depicts the Transfiguration of Jesus. What drew me to gaze at this for so long a time is the amount of detail involved. I had to observe it from the bottom to the very top, registering all key aspects from the depictions of those who questioned God and Moses to the way in which Jesus shone as he ascended and assumed a more heavenly form.
My visit to the MET reinvigorated my appreciation for art and reminded me of how much more valuable it is to see a work in-person rather than to look at it indirectly through a technological medium.