Beaker (Humpen)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The enamel decoration on this beaker features four figures representing different social classes. Above each figure is a Latin inscription describing their role: priests pray, noblemen and knights fight, peasants labor, and merchants “devour all.” The antimerchant sentiment suggests that this work was made for the nobility, rather than a middle-class burgher market, and was likely used in one of the many drinking rituals central to social life in the 1600s.

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