Design for a Sofa Seat Cover (?) with an Ornamental Frame Containing a Vase with a Large Bundle of Flowers and Leaves and Decorated with Acanthus Leaves and Two Fleurs de Lys
Anonymous, French, 19th century
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Rectangular sheet of paper with a design for a sofa seat cover (?) from the second half of the nineteenth century, inspired on the style of Louis XVI, forming part of the Neo-Classical Revival that took place in France and Britain from the 1850s on. The style was part of the Classical and Renaissance Revival that took place from about 1850, where the interest on the art and architecture from Ancient Rome and the 15th and 16th centuries was propelled by archaeological discoveries in Greece, Italy and Egypt. Through this style, Classical and Renaissance pieces of art and design were reinterpreted in a variety of forms and motifs, and classical figures, scrolling decorations, strapwork, and grotesques and moresques, became central element in design. This Revival was characterized by the use of design motifs that alluded to Classical Antiquity, including vases and trophies with pastoral attributes, classical figures and cameos, a mixture of real and fantastic figures, and swags and festoons. These swags and festoons comprised garlands of fabric and ribbon, as well as thin bundles and garlands of flowers and husks colored with pastels. The scale of this design is clearly not true to life and it is not unlikely that this drawing was made for a sample book of an upholsterer, to be shown to the customer as one of many different styles to choose from. The design is made up of an ornamental frame rendered with shades of cream and ocre to simulate a gold finish, decorated with leaves of anthemium of pastel shades of pink and carmine, bordered by aquamarine and grey. The bottom side of the frame is decorated by a thin interlacing garland of flowers, and has a golden vase with a shell-like motif in the center, which holds a large bundle of flowers and branches with leaves that occupies most of the inside of the frame. Above the bundle, the frame scrolls interlace to form a stylized fleur-de-lys motif with three hanging branches with leaves and holding a thin garland of blue and purple flowers and leaves of shades of green that interlaces around the upper part of the frame. The two upper corners of the frame are squared, each containing a small interlacing motif flanked by a fleur-de-lys. The bottom corners of the frame scroll to form stylized wheat ears of golden color and hhold garlands of flowers and leaves that float down from the central bundle. The flowers in the bundle and the lower garland are colored with pastel shades of pink, purple, orange, yellow and carmine; the leaves are colored with various shades of green. The design seems to have been paired with a strikingly similar style for a sofa backrest, also labeled "Pon. 97" with accession number 49.50.186.
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.