The East Pavilion at the Getty Center (Currently Closed for Remodeling)

Every time I visit the Getty Center in Los Angeles, my imagination is rekindled. And, unlike the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), I can visit without spending a small fortune—$26.00 senior admission and almost as much for parking. That comes to almost $50.00 total. I spent a total of seventy cents ($0.70) for the round trip on the MTA 781 bus and the Getty does not charge admission. If you were a senior on a fixed income, which museum would you choose?

For this visit, there was no obvious special exhibition; but I didn’t care because there was always something interesting to see that piqued my curiosity. For instance, I was amazed by a ceramic basin from Italy dated approximately 1600:

Basin with Moses Striking Water from the Rock

Moses in shown in the bottom left of the interior of the basin. According to the Getty website, “Princess Isabella della Rovere (1552-1619), sister of the Duke of Urbino, commissioned this basin as part of a diplomatic gift for Catalina de Zúñiga y Sandoval (1555-1628), wife of the Viceroy of Naples.”

Note the ogre or monster face jutting out from the bottom of the basin. Or is it Satan planning to turn the Israelites escaping Egypt to worshiping a golden calf?

In any case, it is a lovely piece of work

The Getty website provides more details:

The depiction of narrative scenes, known as istoriato in Italian, along with the vivid color palette of the basin are characteristic of ceramics made in Urbino. The city was a major center for the production of tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica) in central Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries. The workshop of Francesco Patanazzi (d. 1616), a member of a renowned ceramicist family, crafted the vessel. Its elegant shape and sculpted decorations, like the satyr-head handles and the base with lion’s paws, attest to the workshop’s virtuosity.