Pendant model with the Labors of Hercules

Pendant model with the Labors of Hercules

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This meticulously crafted wooden jewel pendant was probably intended as a display piece for a Kunstkammer, or collector's cabinet (see 25.135.112), demonstrating the technical skill of its maker (see 17.190.643). The 1586 inventory of the famous "Amerbach cabinet," a bourgeois Kunstkammer in Basel that evolved from the collection of the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam (ca. 1466–1536), mentions no less than 770 different goldsmith's models in various media. This example depicts scenes from the life of a mythological hero: Hercules, with Antaeus (in bas-relief), and on the reverse, Hercules bearing the two pillars of Gibralter (in marquetry).

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pendant model with the Labors of HerculesPendant model with the Labors of HerculesPendant model with the Labors of HerculesPendant model with the Labors of HerculesPendant model with the Labors of Hercules

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.