The Brandenburg Gate

Carl von Scheidt

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This beaker painted with a view of the Brandenburg Gate, which closes the famous Unter den Linden allée in Berlin, is an example of the new medium of translucent enamels developed by a porcelain painter, Samuel Daniel Mohn (1762–1815) about 1805. He worked in Dresden, with a workshop of painters he had trained in the technique. Among his followers, who carried the art to Berlin and Vienna, were Gottlob Samuel Mohn, his son; Carl von Scheidt, who signed and dated this beaker and Anton Kothgasser. It was a cool, delicate medium, especially suitable for topographical views on small objects. However, Gottlob Samuel Mohn also executed stained-glass windows in the technique at the Imperial Palace at Laxenburg for Emperor Francis II of Austria.

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