Museum accessions.(Phoenix Art Museum)

What do the Italian Renaissance sculptor Andrea della Robbia and the haute couture designer Charles Frederick Worth have in common with Qing dynasty Chinese painting and Louis Philippe Hebert, a Canadian sculptor working at the turn of the twentieth century? All are represented among the latest acquisitions made by the Phoenix Art Museum, which recently opened its newly expanded building.

From Renaissance Florence is the masterful bust by Andrea illustrated above. It is so strikingly realistic that it may have been modeled from life, although it probably represents one of the Four Evangelists--perhaps Saint Mark. Two closely related busts by the sculptor but portraying other faces are known; one is in the Musee du Louvre in Paris and the other is in a private collection in Florence. They are all perhaps from a group of busts of the apostles, possibly originally intended to decorate a chapel or a monastery hall. In a period when Michelangelo Buonarroti was carving his masterpieces in marble, Andrea pioneered and perfected the medium of glazed terracotta, probably his most familiar works being the roundels created for the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence in the late 1480s. This work modeled about the same time shows him at the height of his powers and makes it an exceptional addition to the Phoenix Museum's European art collection.

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The museum's steadily growing costume collection has been enriched by the acquisition of the gown designed by Charles Frederick Worth illustrated below. It is currently on view in the exhibition After Dark: 100 Years of the Evening Dress, which features twenty-five glamorous gowns drawn entirely from the museum's own holdings and includes examples by Chanel, Balenciaga, Christian Dior, Mainbocher, Charles James, and others. Worth is generally considered the father of haute couture--the first fashion designer to dictate what women should wear, rather than being a dressmaker who fashioned clothes to the individual tastes of royalty and society. Born in England, he worked in Paris for the Maison Gagelin for almost twenty years before setting up his own shop in 1858 on the rue de la Paix, where he created masterpieces of fit and fabric until his death in 1895. The gown illustrated has the bustle silhouette he popularized in the 1880s and is made of a rich brocade woven with large blossoms and stalks of grain, motifs found frequently in Worth's designs. It has two interchangeable bodices: the one shown is sleeveless with a low decolletage for balls, and the other has ...