On view through May 7, 2023, The Good Life: Collecting Late Antique Art at The Met showcases The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s important and rare collection of third- to eighth-century art from Egypt, reevaluating it through the lens of late antique ideas about abundance, virtue, and shared classical taste. Writers and craftspeople of the time translated these ideas into a concept celebrated as the “the good life.” Anchored by crucial gifts to The Met of late antique art, the exhibition highlights The Met’s holdings of late antique textiles, decorative arts, jewelry, and sculpture—all highly prized by elite patrons of the Byzantine Empire’s southern provinces in Africa—and explores themes connected to social status, wealth, and living well in Late Antiquity.
The exhibition is made possible by The Giorgi Family Foundation.
The works of art featured in the exhibition reflect the extraordinary wealth of Mediterranean Africa. In addition to marking status, these objects responded to such fundamental questions as, What does it mean to “live well”? During the period, ideas about “the good life” intersected with issues of religion, identity, and relationships with the past. As a result, these objects not only testify to The Met’s long-standing interest in late antique art of the region but also shed light on some of the aspirations, values, and lifestyles of its upper classes.
The exhibition will offer four rotations of objects throughout its run, with each rotation consisting of approximately 30 works of art. Among the highlights in the first rotation (on view through December 2021) is an exceptional portrait from 250–300 of an Alexandrian youth, Gennadios; drawn with a needlelike point on a gold leaf applied to the upper surface of a deep blue sapphire, the medallion was likely commissioned to celebrate the youth’s success in a musical contest. A rare Roman Period painting on linen of the goddess of abundance and prosperity—Euthenia—whose image appears on coins, monuments, and textiles until the seventh century, shows her lounging in a pavilion set in a lush garden. Playful depictions of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and fertility, on a marble table dating to ca. 490–530 would have delighted late antique diners as they gathered for meals. Furthermore, the evolving concept of “living well” in a religious context is represented in a fifth–sixth century painted textile of two monastic men (monks aspired to the good life through good deeds, thoughtful contemplation, and moral virtue).
The core of The Met’s collection from late antique Egypt was formed through public subscriptions and generous gifts in the 1890s. The first decades after the Museum’s founding in 1870 marked a time of particular interest in the earliest Christian art from scholars, collectors, and the public alike. Today, The Met continues to collect late antique art that reveals the burgeoning of literary and visual representations of a life well lived.
The exhibition is organized by Andrea Achi, Assistant Curator in the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters.
The exhibition will be featured on The Met website as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter using the hashtag #MetByzantine.
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May 25, 2021
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