More than just beautiful pictures

Pictures within Pictures (Kép a képben) is a clever romp through five centuries of graphic art, from Burgkmair to Picasso, with a twist: all of the 170 prints on display at the Museum of Fine Arts feature one or more smaller pictures within them. Many of these prints, of engravings, etchings, woodcuts, drypoints and mezzotints, along with a few paintings, are further organized into themes based on why they include miniature pictures in their compositions. In every case, the inclusion of a painterly reference or miniature within the work amounts to a reflection on some aspect of the history, aesthetic, or internal conversation of art itself.

The first grouping begins with Renaissance artists portraying stories from antiquity, acknowledging the mythological and early origins of painting, as told by Pliny and others. Highlights include Harmen Jansz. Muller's "Children of Mercury" (1568), Cornelis Cort's "The Calumny of Apelles" (1572), and the later Pietro Testa's "The Triumph of Painting on Parnassus" (1642), all awash with chiaroscuro compasses and monsters, crests and bearded sages, rooster-drawn chariots, marble-chipping sculptors, harpies, spheres and putti, and ample peripheral porticoes replete with shady goings-on.

These grandly enigmatic prints may motivate you to consider their meaning further, which is the best reason for buying the excellent exhibit catalogue. In this generously-illustrated guide, really a stand-alone book in its own right, curator Zsuzsa Gonda offers an insightful introduction to many of the works' significances and interrelation, telling the stories behind them in a scholarly and readable fashion. There is also a slim and innovative "Family Guide" available in the bookshop, so junior can appreciate the flavor of this exhibit, and try his hand at dragon-drawing too.

The sweeping and complex pictorial allegories of the Renaissance are nicely bracketed by the later Daumier, whose sweet, ironic take on the same themes points up the mechanical and inauthentic pompousness to which, in his view, his fellow artists had later fallen. Great relief for the eye is also had when progressing to the mezzotints of William Pether, with his solid sense of composition and great control of lighting. There is also a lot of whimsy in later works, such as the series by Hogarth, and prints with titles such as, "Flora snatches the Pencil from the Painter’s Hand."

Some works deal with the relation between art forms such as poetry and painting, or the rivalry between painting and sculpture that broke out particularly fiercely during the Renaissance. Another category deals with portraits. And there is no shortage of works depicting the insides of ateliers, academies, and expositions, giving the artists a chance to show off their skills at visual quotation.

Most of the works in this exhibit come from the museum's own collection, supplemented by loans from antiquarians (some front-pieces of books are on display) and eight prints from the Graphische Sammlung of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.

Is she, or isn't she?

When you've had your fill of these internal graphic conversations, there are five other temporary exhibits in the museum presently on display into the new year. Downstairs and through the bookshop, one of these, a small exhibit of oil paintings called Titian and the Venetian Madonna, has also recently opened. Part of the "Geniuses and Masterpieces Dossier Exhibit Series", it features "The Virgin and Child with with Infant Saint John and a Female Saint or Donor" by Titian, on loan for this exhibit from the National Gallery in London. Is that kneeling woman really Catherine, depicted for once without the customary wheel on which she was tortured? Among the other works there is also a fine Madonna by Vecchio, a student of Bellini who specialized in "Holy Conversations."

Pictures within Pictures is on display until March 27. Titian and the Venetian Madonna will be on until January 15.

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