Tobacco box

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

An oblong box with rounded ends. Its lid is divided in three. The central field is engraved with a scene showing a man and a woman before a house, with a sun on the horizon. The side fields show leaf-scroll decoration and a serpentine line. Inscribed below: De man hout het huijs de vrou gaat loopen (The man keeps the house, the woman goes out). The underside has similar leaf scrolls on the side panels; in the center a rendezvous between an amorous couple is watched by a male spectator, who is seen half- length in the left foreground. A similar figure appears on several boxes (see Figures 27, 29) and seems to function as a sort of narrator or commentator. Inscribed below: Liefde op de seijde daar de taas haangt (With an affair on the side the trouble starts). Lined rims. The sides are decorated with running hares and dogs as well as geometrical ornament.

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