Standing cup with cover

Lorenz Zick

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The technique of forming objects on a lath, or turning, reached a high degree of complexity in the Renaissance and Baroque eras, when French, Italian, and Central European workshops produced paper-thin hollowed-out shapes from single blocks of ivory. Clerics and noblemen embraced turning as a hobby. Among the rulers who collected masterpieces of turning for their Kunstkammern and practiced the art themselves were the Holy Roman Emperors Maximilian II (r. 1564–76), Rudolf II (r. 1576–1612), and Ferdinand III (r. 1619–37). The eccentric form of one of these cups exemplifies Mannerist taste in Central Europe, though the most challenging aspect of its creation was concocting the lacy hollows that form the stem and spire.

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art