Special Collections

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The Prodigal Son, a well-known Biblical story from Luke 15 of the loving father who unconditionally forgives his wayward son, has inspired artists through the centuries. With The Art of Forgiveness, the Museum of Biblical Art presents an exhibition dedicated to this theme, featuring works from the Renaissance to the present day.

Among the featured works are a monumental, brightly colored Flemish tapestry from the late 15th century depicting scenes from the Prodigal Son story, a poignant etching by Rembrandt van Rijn, and Return of the Prodigal by the Neapolitan School. More than 70 other prints, sculptures and paintings by artists including Pietro Testa, James Tissot and Maurice Langaskens will provide a wide-ranging overview of the impact this theme has had on the history of art.

The Cleveland Museum of Art houses one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of early Christian, Byzantine and Western medieval art in the world. Medieval Masterpieces is the first traveling exhibition to showcase a significant number of that museum’s treasures in this field, some of the most lavish and prized examples of artistic production to survive.

The exhibition includes roughly 125 works of art executed in a variety of media, including decorative works in silver and gold, armor, carved ivories, enamels, sculpture, paintings and illuminated manuscripts from the 3rd–16th centuries. The exhibit will also feature important examples of Byzantine art such as Icon of the Virgin and Child (sixth–seventh century), a rare surviving tapestry from the early Byzantine period. These pieces, which will be organized chronologically and by place of origin, offer a rich survey of the arts and culture of medieval Europe from the Late Antique period through the Ageof Humanism.

The Getty is the second of two venues to house this exhibition, following the installation at the Bavarian National Museum in Munichduring the summer of 2007.

A landmark exhibition of the earliest works of art illustrating the Old and New Testaments, Picturing the Bible draws upon recent research and new discoveries to tell the story of how the early Christians gave visual expression to their religious beliefs. The exhibition will include major loans from the Vatican, the British Museum, the Louvre and a number of other international institutions.

No Christian images are known to date before the third century A.D. because the small community probably hadn’t yet begun creating distinctively Christian works of art. By the early third century, however, they had started to borrow Old Testament motifs and symbolic images that had special Christian significance.

Picturing the Bible brings together a wide range of material in an attempt to help clarify the questions of how Christians in the Greco-Roman period illustrated their religious beliefs, using frescoes, sculptures, marble sarcophagi, silver vessels and reliquaries, carved ivories, engraved gold glass, seals in semiprecious stones, illustrated Bibles and decorated crosses. One of the featured items of the exhibition is the gem-encrusted gold cross presented by Emperor Justin II to Pope John III in the late sixth century. This reliquary was believed to hold a piece of the True Cross.

Museum of Biblical Art

New York, New York