‘Look Again: European Paintings 1300-1800’ Review: Old Master Masterpiece

It’s been said that some museums have a blockbuster on view every day: their permanent collections. That’s true at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has just opened “Look Again: European Paintings 1300-1800,” a reinstallation of its core collection. It’s the art event of the year, in almost every respect an unalloyed triumph.

Overseen by department head Stephan Wolohojian, it presents more than 700 works chronologically across 45 galleries. The story begins with the first stirrings of the naturalism that would define the Renaissance revolution in art. It ends with a gallery of paintings by Goya, prophet of our modern anxiety and inspiration to some of the artists in the 19th- and 20th-century galleries. Supplementing this are thematic galleries devoted to topics such as objects of private devotion—small-scale religious images—and an explanation of how surfaces like canvas, copper, plaster and wood affect the appearance of the pictures painted on them.