Until that moment, however, we are simply filled with the room’s floral magic, a magic not only performed by Collin’s sizable canvas but also by two gargantuan porcelain vases that once, as the historic photo on the accompanying label demonstrates, carried equally oversized, equally ornate candleholders. Our initial feeling of carefree enjoyment yields to a more somber contemplation of inequality, as the pictures pitch leisure against labor we begin to wonder about the role of gender and class in determining a nineteenth-century life. Compared to the leisurely airiness of Collin’s canvas, the image of a woman ironing, portrayed by François Bonvin in 1858, is decidedly gloomy both in effect and theme, and its bold depiction of the taxing nature of domestic labor resonates strongly with the smoking chimneys lining the Thames in Jules Bastien-Lepage’s 1882 London. Such feminist sentiment is certainly reinforced by the vignettes of modern life facing her (fig. Only her introspective expression seems at odds with the scene’s vivacious fecundity, and we wonder whether she feels uneasy about appearing as yet another ornament. It is a dreamy slice of life, which the curator in charge of the overhaul, Jennifer Thompson, has chosen to welcome us, a celebration of color and ornamental beauty, orchestrated around an abundance of flowers, flowers growing in the front yard, gathered into a wild bouquet, and placed rather precariously on the window sill, with still more flowers lurking in even thicker, larger arrangements in the room’s dark interior, flowers piled up high on the hat of the young woman at the window or strewn, as little colorful dots, across the white cotton of her tightly tailored dress. It is almost as if an eternal spring has settled into the cozy room, and, feeling an almost visceral sense of well-being, we soak in the sun and sweet morning air that Louis-Joseph Raphaël Collin, enchanted by the fashionable woman in the open window, recorded with such panache in 1884 (fig. Leaving behind the cold grandeur of the entrance hall, a charming ensemble transports us into a magic world of color and décor. The first room (Gallery 250), an intimate space of merely 16 x 15 feet, sets the tone for much of what follows (fig. The lithe goddess is a perfect preamble to the newly renovated and reinstalled galleries of European art from between 18 that branch off at the bottom of staircase to the right. Now, still poised elegantly atop an orb, the former weathervane shimmers temptingly against the stony background of the building’s dolomitic limestone, her gold-leaf finish restored to its former glory in 2013–14. Once she stood high in the open air, crowning the tower of Madison Square Garden as a major artistic feature of New York’s skyline.

Today, entering the building from the side facing the river, we are greeted by the solemn monumentality of the grand staircase and an iridescent Diana (1892–93), who, about to release her bow, is aiming at an invisible victim hiding somewhere on the third-floor balcony. Its east facade looked over the Parkway, imagined as Philadelphia’s Champs-Elysée to the west was the Schuylkill River, where Frederick Graff’s acclaimed waterworks, built between 18, completed the site’s neo-Grec evocation of an ancient acropolis.

A consummate example of the City Beautiful Movement of the 1890s, it was perched high above the city as a true temple of art. In 1928, Philadelphia could celebrate the completion of its most ambitious museum building to date.

Philadelphia museum of art view from