Terra-cotta Relief Falls to Met Floor

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The New York Sun

A terra-cotta relief by the Renaissance sculptor Andrea della Robbia fell off the wall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at some point Monday night or early Tuesday morning, the museum said Tuesday.

The relief, a lunette depicting Saint Michael the Archangel, came loose from its wall mounts and fell on its back side, suffering “a lot of cracking and separation,” the Met’s spokesman, Harold Holzer, said. “There are very large pieces that are still intact,” Mr. Holzer said. “The judgment now is that the piece is eminently restorable.”

The relief was commissioned around 1475 for the church of San Michele Arcangelo in Faenza, Italy. The museum acquired it in 1960. Mr. Holzer said that the Met is in a constant process of inspecting and maintaining wall mounts and pedestals, but that it would also conduct rigorous inspections in the coming days.

The Met had a similar accident in 2002, when the pedestal supporting a 15th-century marble statue of Adam by the Venetian sculptor Tullio Lombardo spontaneously buckled, causing the statue to fall to the floor and shatter. That sculpture is still being restored, Mr. Holzer said yesterday.


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