Chessmen (32)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The European king and queen, possibly Carlos I of Portugal and Queen Marie Amélie, are represented by crowned heads, the bishop by an episcopal head wearing an orientalized miter. Their opponents are Chinese, the king with an elegantly fretted headdress. Both knights are horse heads of a type common in European chess sets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. An echo of Chinese chess, which has pieces named cannons, is in the mortars surmounted by flags for the rooks. The pawns are heads of Europeans or Chinese on baluster stands. The type of chessmen composed of balusters surmounted by human heads appears also in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the nineteenth century (Wichmann, Chess, pl. 156). Pieces of this type are practical for play. The theme is obviously Europeans and Chinese; the combination of Occidental and Oriental features has been satisfactorily accomplished.

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