Many small Renaissance portraits were richly adorned with covers or backs bearing allegorical figures, mythological scenes, or emblems that celebrated the sitter and invited the viewer to decipher their meaning. Hidden Faces includes seventy objects, ranging in format from covered paintings to miniature boxes, that illuminate the symbiotic relationship between the portrait and its pair. Texts by thirteen distinguished scholars vividly illustrate that the other “faces” of these portraits represent some of the most innovative images of the Renaissance, created by masters such as Hans Memling and Titian. Uniting works that have in some cases been separated for centuries, this fascinating volume shows how the multifaceted format unveiled the sitter’s identity, both by physically revealing the portrait and reading the significance behind its cover.

This catalogue, published annually by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announces the Museum's publications for that year. It also features notable backlist titles and provides a complete list of books available in print at the time of publication.

A sweeping, epic history of the Renaissance artists, seen through the lens of something that perhaps occupied their thoughts and influenced their art the most…sex. Taking Donatello's provocative reinvention of the nude as his starting point, Jonathan shows how the story of the Renaissance is the story of a sexual revolution. The great artists of the 15th and 16th century were not just visionaries, but lovers. Jonathan argues that the famous nudes of Michelangelo and Titian are not abstract images of ideal beauty, but erotic expressions of love and desire; and that in order to understand the Renaissance, we have to understand the sex lives of the men and women who defined it - men like Raphael, who obsessively painted his lover La Fornarina in the nude, Michelangelo, who made beautiful drawings of naked male bodies to present to the young man he adored, and Rembrandt, whose bedroom portraits of Hendrickje Stoffels are the frankest expressions of love anywhere in art.Sweeping from its origins in Florence in the mid-15th century to its culmination in the work of Rubens and Rembrandt in the 17th, The Loves of the Artistsshows that the Renaissance invented eroticism as we know it, and that the new ways of thinking about sex it engendered are crucial to understanding not only art but European culture as a whole.

"An illuminating reassessment of the architect whose innovative drawings of ruins shaped the enduring image of ancient Rome"--

This landmark publication reevaluates historical Native American art as a crucial but under-examined component of American art history. The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection, a transformative promised gift to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, includes masterworks from more than fifty cultures across North America. The works highlighted in this volume span centuries, from before contact with European settlers to the early twentieth century. In this beautifully illustrated volume, featuring all new photography, the innovative visions of known and unknown makers are presented in a wide variety of forms, from painting, sculpture, and drawing to regalia, ceramics, and baskets. The book provides key insights into the art, culture, and daily life of culturally distinct Indigenous peoples along with critical and popular perceptions over time, revealing that to engage Native art is to reconsider the very meaning of America. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana}

Over the course of his acclaimed 60-year career, Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) has employed both representation and abstraction as a means of reckoning with the legacy, collective memory, and national sensibility of post–WWII Germany, in both broad and very personal terms. This handsomely designed book spans the artist’s rich and varied oeuvre from the early 1960s to the present, including photo paintings, portraits, large-scale abstract series, and works on glass. Essays by leading experts on the artist illuminate Richter’s preoccupation with painting in relation to other modes of representation, and emphasize the ongoing importance of the medium’s formal and conceptual possibilities in contemporary art.

Published in conjunction with an exhibition held at the Bode-Museum, Berlin, Aug. 25-Nov. 20, 2011, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Dec. 21, 2011-Mar. 18, 2012.