Masterpieces of Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston were founded in 1870, and in their shared centennial year the two institutions marked the occasion by exchanging one hundred of their most celebrated works. The Met’s selection traveled to Boston as “Masterpieces of Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art,“ on view from September 16 through November 1, 1970. The hundred paintings ranged from Giotto’s Epiphany through Canaletto, Holbein, El Greco, and Tiepolo to Cézanne, Monet, Picasso, and a canvas by Morris Louis painted in 1961 -- a compressed survey of the collection’s depth across seven centuries.

Vermeer’s Young Woman with a Water Pitcher was among the Dutch paintings included, appearing unnumbered on page 45 of the catalogue. The work had entered the Met in 1889 as a gift from Henry G. Marquand, who had acquired it in Paris in 1887, making it the first Vermeer painting to enter an American collection. By 1970 the painting had been in the Met’s permanent collection for more than eighty years and was already established under its modern title.