San Diego Museum of Art
Balboa Park, San Diego
September 5, 2021
We donned our masks and headed to the Museum of Art for our first conventional indoor museum visit in a year and a half. We went to see the special exhibition “Cranach to Canaletto: Masterpieces from the Bemberg Foundation.” The exhibition included more than 80 paintings belonging to the Bemberg Foundation collection in Toulouse, France. Artists represented included, in addition to Cranach and Canaletto, Clouet, Boucher, Tintoretto, the younger Brueghel, and several others. Their home is undergoing restoration, making it possible for the works to be sent on tour elsewhere.
We saw some impressive and beautiful works from the 16th through 18th centuries. They were gathered by type and subject matter, with portraits all shown together, interiors in another section, religious and mythological works together, and then landscapes and other exterior scenes in the final room. Meredith particularly liked the portraits painted by Tintoretto. We were both amused by Boucher’s putti (cherubs). They were playing in their own paintings, apart from any larger scene, and looked as if they were taking a break from dancing attendance on God in some great theophany scene.
In the gallery just outside the Bemberg exhibition we looked at some contemporary paintings inspired by the pandemic.
The Bemberg exhibition has since closed. We are planning to go see the Renaissance to Realism exhibition currently on view which features secular paintings from the 17th century.