Cicero

Giuseppe Girometti

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Neoclassical age prized the sternly republican marble head of Cicero (106–43 B.C.) in the Musei Capitolini, Rome. An intaglio after it by Nathaniel Marchant (40.20.1) circulated in the form of gypsum impressions. The Roman carvers of these two heads consulted the sculpture itself, obtaining different results. The more numismatic approach of the cameo carved about 1810–20 by a member of the Cerbara family (40.20.34), in which the features are affixed with broad authority, typifies the work of that clan (Gian Battista Cerbara [d. 1811] sired Giuseppe [1770–1856] and Nicola [1796–1869], Nicola succeeding Giuseppe as master of the papal mint). Yet Cerbara also employed the buff areas to suggest flesh, while the starker white-on-black contrast in Giuseppe Girometti’s Cicero evokes marble. Girometti’s work is also more detailed, delivering a keener sense of the great orator’s cogitations through his careworn features.

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