Panel with grotesques, from a set of bed hangings

Panel with grotesques, from a set of bed hangings

Cornelis Floris II

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The late fifteenth-century rediscovery of the Roman emperor Nero’s palace, the Domus Aurea, or Golden House, spurred a revival of the fanciful decorations of part-human creatures amid leafy patterns—called “grotesques”—that were found on its walls and evoked the palace’s grottolike, subterranean spaces. Italian and Flemish designers of the period developed the style in tapestries, whose bright dyes and space-enveloping properties were suited to grotesques’ sinuous forms and skewed, otherworldly version of reality. Pope Leo X and the Genoese statesman Andrea Doria both commissioned grotesque tapestries from celebrated Brussels-based weavers; this panel, with its bold palette and fanciful, Antique-inspired motifs, was probably originally made for Philip II, King of Spain, to embellish a four-poster bed.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Panel with grotesques, from a set of bed hangingsPanel with grotesques, from a set of bed hangingsPanel with grotesques, from a set of bed hangingsPanel with grotesques, from a set of bed hangingsPanel with grotesques, from a set of bed hangings

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.