Bona Sforza (1493–1557), Queen of Poland

Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Exceptionally for the Renaissance, this is a signed cameo, bearing the signature of Gian Giacomo Caraglio, who was born in Verona and later worked in Venice and then Cracow and who was best known as a printmaker. Bona Sforza, daughter of the duke of Milan, married Sigismund I, king of Poland, in 1518. At Sigismund’s death in 1548 she returned to Italy, where she died in 1557. The cameo is inlaid with gold that enhances details of Bona’s chain and hairnet, and a silver Medusa’s head (see detail; for Medusa, see also fig. 59) is inset on her breast, in the same spirit of jewelry within jewelry. The only other gem signed by Caraglio, an agate similarly bedecked with gold representing Barbara Radziwill, Bona’s successor as queen of Poland, is in the Münzkabinett, Munich. The dainty frame, although dated 1554 on the reverse, is a nineteenth-century invention.

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