Irish and Christian

Most of us think of the centuries succeeding the fall of the Roman Empire as a time of unrelieved doom and catastrophe, with barbarian tribes crisscrossing the European map, with the light of learning, of art, of classical civilization extinguished—in short, as a Dark Age when the beacon of Christianity was only barely kept alive. Now, either by design or by coincidence, the Metropolitan Museum is playing host simultaneously to two remarkable exhibitions which cast a new, bright light on this obscure period and prove that, far from being a cultural and artistic void, it was nearly as fecund as the times preceding and following it.

One exhibition, rather misleadingly called The Age of Spirituality, surveys late antique and early Christian art from the third to the seventh centuries, concentrating largely on work produced in eastern centers like Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople. Its list of lenders reads like a Who’s Who of museums and libraries from the Kremlin to the Vatican and points west. The other, Treasures of Irish Art, 1500 B.C., to 1500 a.d., includes nearly all the most precious objects scattered through Irish national collections, few of which have ever been permitted to leave their native land before, let alone cross the Atlantic. After its closing (on January 15), the Irish Art show will travel to San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Boston, and Philadelphia; the Early Christian show, however, can be seen only in New York (to February 12). It is worth the trip.

RB

About the Author

Ruth Berenson

Most of us think of the centuries succeeding the fall of the Roman Empire as a time of unrelieved doom and catastrophe, with barbarian tribes crisscrossing the European map, with the light of learning, of art, of classical civilization extinguished—in short, as a Dark Age when the beacon of Christianity was only barely kept alive. Now, either by design or by coincidence, the Metropolitan Museum is playing host simultaneously to two remarkable exhibitions which cast a new, bright light on this obscure period and prove that, far from being a cultural and artistic void, it was nearly as fecund as the times preceding and following it.

One exhibition, rather misleadingly called The Age of Spirituality, surveys late antique and early Christian art from the third to the seventh centuries, concentrating largely on work produced in eastern centers like Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople. Its list of lenders reads like a Who’s Who of museums and libraries from the Kremlin to the Vatican and points west. The other, Treasures of Irish Art, 1500 B.C., to 1500 a.d., includes nearly all the most precious objects scattered through Irish national collections, few of which have ever been permitted to leave their native land before, let alone cross the Atlantic. After its closing (on January 15), the Irish Art show will travel to San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Boston, and Philadelphia; the Early Christian show, however, can be seen only in New York (to February 12). It is worth the trip.