Armorer's vise

Jacopo da Ferrara

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In sixteenth century Italy the technique of cold-chiseling sculpturesque subjects remained primarily the province of the armorer. Sculpturesque ornament extended even to the tools of the armorer’s craft. The jaws of this iron vise are decorated with a mermaid and a merman, while another merman adorns the back. The vise is inscribed with the date 1588 and the name of its maker, Jacopo da Ferrara, about whom nothing further is known, though his name suggests he had left Ferrara when this piece was made. Although the three creatures of chiseled iron are less finely finished than many of those of the sixteenth century Milanese armorers, who were world famous for the beauty and delicacy of their sculptured ornament, they are far more lively in conception. In the taut, powerful anatomies of the mermaid and merman braced against each jaw of the vise, Jacopo was able to express all the straining power of the mechanism they adorn.

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