In 1927, Alva, long divorced from William Vanderbilt, asked the dealer Joseph Duveen to inspect her house, and in December of that year, he sold John Ringling nearly the entire contents of the Gothic Room. Many of the objects are treasures in and of themselves, but Ringling was equally interested in purchasing their pedigree as well as the look and feel of splendid accumulation created in the Gothic room, a striking if not historically accurate pastiche of medieval and Renaissance church treasuries an the kunstkammers and studioli of secular rulers. Although Ringling had bought complete paneled rooms from the Astor mansion in New York to decorate the new museum, surprisingly however, he did not create a medieval setting for the Gavet objects. Instead they form the nucleus of the museum’s medieval and Renaissance collection and are displayed in the permanent collection galleries as part of the wider narrative of the history of art.

This exhibition will bring together a significant group of the Ringling’s holdings of works from the Gavet-Vanderbilt collection, including paintings, sculpture, metalwork, furniture, ceramics, cameos, watches, and miniatures. Although some will be familiar to the Ringling Museum’s regular visitors, many have rarely or never been available for public viewing. In the exhibition, their display in Gavet’s Paris apartment and in the Gothic room will be evoked, both by their installation in the exhibition and using period photographs. The biographies and collecting patterns of Emile Gavet, Alva Vanderbilt, and John Ringling will be explored and placed in the broader context of collecting medieval and Renaissance art in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.