The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (311 page)

 
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metal cut
.

A print made from a metal plate in which the design is cut in
relief
(as in a
woodcut
) rather than incised into the plate as in a
line engraving
. Prints done in the
manière criblée
are examples of the type.

 
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metal point
.

Method of drawing using a small metal rod, pointed at one end, on specially prepared paper. The metal may be copper, gold, lead, or (most commonly) silver, which gives an attractive fine grey line that oxidizes to a light brown. The strength of tone can hardly be varied at all, so the technique depends on the quality of the drawn line and is best suited to work on a small scale. Moreover, it demands great certainty of purpose and hand, for the line cannot be removed except by disturbing the
ground
, a coating of opaque white, often tinted by the addition of another pigment. Silver point first appeared in medieval Italy and was particularly popular in the 15th cent.;
Dürer
and
Leonardo
were perhaps the greatest exponents of the medium. It went out of fashion in the 17th cent., probably because the graphite
pencil
was coming in, but was revived in the 18th cent. by
miniature
painters, especially in France.

 
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Metaphysical painting
.

A style of painting invented by de
Chirico
in about 1913 and practised by him,
Carrà
(from 1917),
Morandi
(from 1918), and a few other Italian artists until about 1920. The term (
Pittura Metafisica
) was coined by de Chirico and Carrà in 1917, when both were patients at a military hospital in Ferrara, and the style is characterized by images conveying a sense of mystery and hallucination. This was achieved partly by unreal perspectives and lighting, partly by the adoption of a strange
iconography
involving, for example, the use of tailor's dummies and statues in place of human figures, and partly by an incongruous juxtaposition of realistically depicted objects in a manner later taken over by some of the
Surrealists
. Metaphysical painting had great influence on Surrealism, but the dreamlike quality conveyed by Metaphysical painters differed from that of the Surrealists because of their concern with pictorial structure and a strongly architectural sense of repose deriving from Italian
Renaissance
art.

 
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Metropolitan Museum of Art
, New York.

The most comprehensive collection of art in the USA and one of the greatest in the world. It was founded in 1870 and the present building in Central Park was opened in 1880. The museum is owned by the city, but is supported mainly by private endowment, and the history of its foundation and growth illustrates the rapid rise of New York at the end of the 19th cent. as the financial and cultural capital of North America, and the growing economic supremacy of America over Europe. Between 1880 and 1925, at a time when the major public collections in Europe were engaged in consolidation, relying largely on their purchase grants and other state aid, the Metropolitan Museum was being built up out of the private fortunes of great businessmen, who collected rather for prestige than out of connoisseurship, but collected only first-class works of art. It has also benefited from a number of endowed purchase grants, many of them unconditional, which have enabled it to progress not only as a collection of outstanding works, but as a comprehensive and representative one. The museum is rich in virtually every field of the
fine
and
applied arts
from all parts of the world and also houses one of the world's largest art libraries. Much of the collection of medieval art is housed in a separate building called the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park, overlooking the Hudson River. Opened in 1938, the Cloisters is a medieval-style structure, largely made up of parts of
Romanesque
and
Gothic
buildings transported from Europe. Many of the works it houses were collected by the American sculptor George Grey Barnard (1863–1938), who lived in France for much of his career.

 
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