Chessmen

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The principal pieces are similar on each side, with poets carrying scrolls for bishops. The knights are horses that emerge at the haunches with forelegs raised in a prancing attitude. The castles seem disproportionately large to the rest of the major pieces. Pawns are peasant girls on the silver side and young men on the gold side. The bases are marked "13-1783," the Viennese silver warranty mark for 1783. The mark applies to the bases only; the figural parts are of the nineteenth century.

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