Study of an Urn; Study for the Frieze Decoration around the Urn

Edward Pierce (Pearce) II

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The son of a decorative painter, Edward Pierce the younger pursued a career as sculptor and architect, modeling busts of Oliver Cromwell (1672) and Sir Christopher Wren (1673), then working on city churches designed by the latter after the Great Fire of London. Pierce himself designed the Bishop's Palace at Lichfield (1686-7) and was known as a skilled decorative carver. He likely made this designs for an ornate decorative urn in the 1690s while employed at Hampton Court. Two sheets are here affixed to one mount with the drawing above describing the whole urn and that below a classical scene of sacrifice around the bowl.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art