Tazza cover

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The decoration is a translation into pottery of mid-sixteenth-century engraved ornament originally derived from Italian sources but thoroughly naturalized in France by the mid-sixteenth century. The applied ornament is also found in contemporary goldsmiths' work, not only in France but also in such international centers as Praque and Nürnberg. The pictorial motif of a child playing a viol on the inner side was achieved by filling an impressed line with dark clay and then adding tints of blue and green lead glazes. An intricate pattern of interlacing bands and vines serves as a backdrop for leaf and lizard ornaments radiating from the finial; the seated child at the top is mostly a replacement. On the underside is an image of a putto playing a viol; music-playing children appear in Fontainebleau’s Galerie François Ier (1533–40) and in the prints it inspired.

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