Metropolitan Museum of Art: European Art
The Met's European Art galleries are at their best in the Dutch painting section, with major works of Rembrandt (a superb Self-Portrait ), Hals , and especially Vermeer , whose Young Woman with a Water Jug and A Girl Asleep display the artist at his most complex and the Met at its most fortunate. Continue on, and as you loop back to the entrance to the painting galleries you'll pass through another smattering of works by Spanish, French and Italian painters, most notably Goya and Velázquez . The latter's piercing and somber Portrait of Juan de Pareja shouldn't be missed. A whole room is dedicated to the formidable works of El Greco . His extraordinary View of Toledo - all brooding intensity as the skies seem about to swallow up the ghost-like town - is perhaps the best of his works anywhere in the world.The Italian Renaissance isn't spectacularly represented, but there's a worthy selection from the various Italian schools; these works consist largely of narrative panels or altarpieces, and gold paint is often used, either for the background or for the haloes of the religious figures. Highlights include an early Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints by Raphael , a late Botticelli (the crisply linear Three Miracles of Saint Zenobius ), Filippo Lippi 's Madonna and Child Enthroned with Two Angels , and Michele de Verona 's handsome Madonna and Child with the Infant John the Baptist , in which the characters are almost sculpturally rendered.
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