by Karen Gormandy, Fountain House Studio Director
New York City is full of surprises. The Cloisters (also known as the Met Cloisters) is one of them. While the city is known for fuss, noise, glamour, clamor, grandeur and edginess, we also have times and places that offer tranquility and peace. On a beautiful spring day, off we went – Guiomar, Laurent, Louise, Marlena, Dominik, Faith, Gabriel and I, to spend time at the peaceful Metropolitan Museum extension.
The museum sits on a hill between the neighborhoods of Washington Heights and Inwood in Upper Manhattan. In spring through fall, if you exit the A train at the Dyckman Street station, you can see the Cloisters tower framed by foliage and sometimes a clear blue sky.
Photo courtesy e-course.us.
All roads go uphill if you approach from the south side. The walk (or bus ride) is worth it as the path straddles the Hudson to the left and passes through the Heather Garden.
Along the way there are spectacular views of both the Palisades directly across the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge to the immediate south. On a still, non-windy day, the river is like a sheet of silver.
The museum specializes in medieval European art and architecture, with a focus on the Romanesque and Gothic periods. The structure comprises several buildings centered around four cloisters acquired by American sculptor and art dealer George Grey Barnard. John D. Rockefeller purchased the museum site in Fort Washington in 1930 and donated it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1931. Governed by the Metropolitan, it contains a large collection of medieval artworks displayed in the architectural settings of French monasteries and abbeys.
The building contains several medieval gardens along with a series of chapels and themed galleries, including the Romanesque, Fuentidueña, Unicorn, Spanish, and Gothic rooms. The design, layout, and ambience of the building are intended to evoke a sense of medieval European monastic life. It holds about 5,000 works of art and architecture, all European and primarily dating from the Byzantine to the Early Renaissance periods, largely during the 12th through 15th centuries. The objects include stone and wood sculptures and the famed Unicorn Tapestries, manuscripts, and panel paintings.
Featured on the day of our visit were the gardens. We opted for the garden tour and began with The Judy Black Garden in the Cuxa Cloister. Our interest in the vast growth of flowers and plants was piqued by our participation in Faith’s flower arrangement workshop.
In a monastery, a “cloister” is a square or rectangular open-air courtyard surrounded by covered passageways. The plan of the garden is typically medieval, with a fountain set at the center of crossed paths. Medieval plants are supplemented with modern varieties to provide a long season of bloom, beginning with early crocuses and snowdrops, followed by columbines, pinks, bellflowers, foxgloves, daisies, poppies, and many other varieties that bloom through late fall.
After the first garden tour we made our way to the Bonnefont Cloister Herb Garden. The walk took us through the cool halls featuring medieval pieces. Yes, we were chasing art – but at the Cloisters it is the place, the architecture, the light and the environment that house the art that become the main attraction. The air was noticeably cooler and sound was muted and sacred. Within the walls are symbolic symbols of Christianity, including the Virgin Mary, carved saints, religious figures in sarcophagi – most created during a time when the Christian Church was the primary benefactor and sponsor of the arts and therefore the subjects were saints, abbots, and other persons connected to the Church.
The carvings were somber and lent themselves to contemplative observation. Reverence and reflections on things greater than we or answers to the greater philosophical questions were the focal points. For the most part, artisans and artists were unnamed men who had dedicated their lives to the Church; their materials and tools required a good deal of patience and time in order to achieve the desired results.
The raised beds of the Bonnefont Cloister Herb Garden contain one of the most specialized plant collections in the world.
The foundation of the plant list is a ninth-century edict of the emperor Charlemagne, in which are named 89 species to be grown on his estates. This list has been supplemented by herbalists and monastic records, as well as archaeological evidence. The collection is based upon the more than 400 species of plants known and used in the Middle Ages; plants are grouped and labeled according to their medieval use, whether in cooking, medicine, art, industry, housekeeping, or magic.
We couldn’t leave without seeing The Unicorn Tapestries.
The Unicorn Tapestries or The Hunt of the Unicorn (French: La Chasse à la Licorne) is a series of seven tapestries made in the Netherlands circa 1495-1505.They were possibly designed in Paris and woven in Brussels and depict a group of noblemen and hunters in pursuit of a unicorn through an idealized French landscape. The tapestries were woven in wool, metallic threads, and silk. The vibrant color, produced from dye plants, remains in evidence today.
The pieces have been the subject of scholarly debate as to the meaning of their iconography, the identity of the artists who designed them, and the sequence in which they were meant to be hung. Various theories have been put forward, but nothing is known of their early history or provenance. Scholars have conjectured the following sequence:
- "The Hunters Enter the Woods"
- "The Unicorn Purifies Water"
- "The Unicorn Crosses a Stream"
- "The Unicorn Defends Himself"
- "The Unicorn Surrenders to a Maiden" (two fragments)
- "The Hunters Return to the Castle"
- "The Unicorn Rests in a Garden"
These pieces are well-crafted, with stunning detail that no doubt required an admirable level of skill, focus, and planning. That said, they are nonetheless brutal and bloody.
We came back out into the light, where the air carried the scent of the river, the grass, and the flowers. Guiomar and Dominik said their goodbyes. Gabriel, Laurent, Louise, Faith, Marlena and I went back to the Studio to complete our day.