New York’s Frick Collection is home to one of the most
important groups of Renaissance enamelsin the world,
ranking alongside those of the Musée du Louvre in Paris,
The Wallace Collection and the Victoria & Albert Museum
in London, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,
and The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The forty-two
enamels in The Frick Collection were produced in the city
of Limoges, in central France, fromthe late fifteenth to the
early seventeenth century. A selection of the Frick’s
enamelsreturned to view this month after a year’s absence.
During this period, many objects were examined and treated for the first time since they entered the Collection.
This project was inspired by advancesin the last decade in the understanding of Renaissance enamel production
and composition. It has also benefited from a major international
enamel conservation conference held at the Frick. The consensus
about the care of enamels has led many institutionsto place themin
environments of absolute temperature stability with a lower relative
humidity than had been recommended in the past. With this new
standard in mind, The Frick Collection rebuilt the historic cases
created in 1935 for its Enamels Roomby the eminent architect John
Russell Pope (1874–1937).