Eternal Spring

Auguste Rodin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The woman arches her torso in willful surrender to her partner, who bends at his ease to kiss her. Rodin　temepered the work’s overt eroticism by giving it a variety of classicizing titles. First called Zephyr and Earth and later exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1897 as Cupid and Psyche, the composition’s true subject is sensuality and impassioned lovemaking. This marble version, commissioned in 1906 by the railroad investor and banker Isaac D. Fletcher, displays the soft, veiled quality of carving associated with Rodin’s late marbles.

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