Watch

David Ramsay

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the first quarter of the seventeenth century a small group of enamelers in Limoges produced polychrome painted enamels for watchcases. Most of the surviving enamels, including the one displayed here, were adapted from the woodcut illustrations by Bernard Salomon (1505/1510–ca. 1561) for the editions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses published in Lyon by Jean de Tournes beginning in 1555. The case of the watch was cleverly modified, probably at some time in the second half of the nineteenth century, to fit a movement of equal rarity.

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