Baptism of Fire: Terracotta Masterpieces Spanning Three Millennia

This fascinating exhibition brings together an unprecedented array of objects dating from the 5th century BC to the 1960s. Terracotta, literally meaning “cooked earth,” has served as an essential medium since the earliest periods of domestic production and artistic expression.

While terracotta is often associated primarily with works from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, this carefully curated exhibition highlights the enduring legacy of the medium across vastly different historical periods. Long admired for both its malleability and its remarkable ability to capture the finest details, terracotta has also been prized for its durability.

In Baptism of Fire, visitors encounter works ranging from a powerful fragmentary panther head from Southern Italy dating to the late fifth century BC, to an equally moving pair of angels from late Baroque Rome attributed to Francesco Moratti (c. 1669–1719).

Chronologically, the exhibition concludes with an extraordinary shallow relief by Pablo Picasso, created in 1964 as part of the artist’s celebrated homage to Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe.