Turnus Provoked into War by Aeneas

Turnus Provoked into War by Aeneas

José Manuel de la Cerda

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This exceptional lacquerware tray (batea) is the work of José Manuel de la Cerda, an Indigenous artist active in Pátzcuaro (Michoacán) in west-central Mexico during the mid-18th century. De la Cerda’s highly inventive lacquerware exemplifies the ways in which local artistic traditions in New Spain were profoundly transformed by the presence of imported art objects from both Europe and Asia. Using a pre-Hispanic lacquer technique, De la Cerda’s batea features a rarely depicted episode from Virgil’s Aeneid in combination with ornamentation inspired by East Asian lacquerware as well as European chinoiserie. The batea provides visual evidence of the cultural consequences of Mexico’s unusual status as a nexus of both transpacific and transatlantic trade.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.