Portrait of Emma Hart, Later Lady Hamilton (1765–1803)

Portrait of Emma Hart, Later Lady Hamilton (1765–1803)

Nathaniel Marchant

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Neoclassical Europe appreciated Nathaniel Marchant's emulation of the best in Greco-Roman form and his glyptic perfectionism, with results not unlike our a late 1st century cameo in the Museum's collection (10.110.1). In 1786–87 he visited Naples, where the beauteous Emma Hart was the current rage. Artists crowded the rooms of her protector, Sir William Hamilton: "The house is full of painters painting me," Emma wrote. "Marchant is cutting my head in stone, that is in cameo for a ring. . . . All the artists is coming from Rome to study from me." Either Marchant cut both a cameo and an intaglio or the unlettered Emma confused the two. The Grecian headdress is in keeping with her famous "attitudes," poses she struck based on masterpieces of antiquity.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Portrait of Emma Hart, Later Lady Hamilton (1765–1803)Portrait of Emma Hart, Later Lady Hamilton (1765–1803)Portrait of Emma Hart, Later Lady Hamilton (1765–1803)Portrait of Emma Hart, Later Lady Hamilton (1765–1803)Portrait of Emma Hart, Later Lady Hamilton (1765–1803)

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.