Bed curtain border
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
This object is from the collection of Natalia de Shabelsky (1841-1905), a Russian noblewoman compelled to preserve what she perceived as the vanishing folk art traditions of her native country. Traveling extensively throughout Great Russia, she collected many fine examples of textile art of the wealthy peasant class. From the 1870s until moving to France in 1902, Shabelsky amassed a large collection of intricately embroidered hand-woven household textiles and opulent festival garments with rich decoration and elaborate motifs. The Brooklyn Museum holdings include many fine examples including the majority of the garments. Portions of Shabelsky's collection are also housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Cleveland Art Museum, and the Russian Museum of Ethnography in St. Petersburg. Depictions of the goddess are common in Russian embroidery, traditionally associated with fertility. Later depictions of the goddess are very stylized, resembling a plant or tree-of life, as in this example. A smaller daughter or minor goddess often accompanies the great goddess in embroideries intended to represent reproductive fertility. The double-headed Imperial eagle is common to many cultures throughout history, most notably the Byzantium. Through Ivan III's marriage to Zoe Palaeologina, niece of Byzantine emperor Constantine XI, the heraldic symbol spread to Russia. The dual heads were meant represent the secular and religious sovereignty of the monarch, as well as sovereignty over the East and West.
European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.