Goblet

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This fine, deep blue Venetian glass bears exquisite enameling, an early survival of this technique and scale of decoration. The enameling, reminiscent of manuscript illumination, illustrates an apocryphal story about the Latin poet Virgil, transformed in the popular medieval imagination into a magician. Taking revenge on the maiden Febilla who spurned his advances, Virgil magically extinguished all the fires in Rome and cruelly demanded that Febilla be exposed in the marketplace until all of the city's women had rekindled their fires with tapers lighted from an enchanted live coal he had placed inside her body.

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