The Crucifixion

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The size of this jewel and related ones (see also 17.190.893; 32.100.298; 32.100.306; and 41.100.26) is such that only the closest viewer could appreciate their full beauty and dexterous execution; they represent the finest craftsmanship for the wealthiest patrons. Each combines gold with natural treasures, such as pearls and gemstones. Bulbous baroque pearls cleverly suggest the fluffy down of a swan’s underbelly or a cloudy mass supporting the Crucifixion. Tiny figures are enameled in the round. Melding the secular and the sacred, these jewels were made to be worn: pinned to garments or hanging close to their owners’ skin. The animals might be heraldic devices; the swan, for example, could symbolize the Society of the Virgin Mary, called the Order of the Swan, which was founded in mid-fifteenth-century Brandenburg in Germany. [Elizabeth Cleland, 2017]

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