Ceremonial scene with Abundance and Piping Pan

Adam Partnership

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The painting comes from the Long Gallery at Croome Court, the decoration of which had been commissioned from Robert Adam by the sixth earl of Coventry and substantially completed in 1765. Sefferin Alken was the maker of the original frame (see 60.50b), which the Museum does not exhibit; his bill dates to August of that same year and the chiaroscuro must be more or less contemporaneous. It was acquired to hang over the mantel in the Lansdowne Room, surrounded by a slightly enlarged but original molding which, curiously enough, had been left empty. While the subject is in the antique taste, only Abundance, crowned with a wreath and supporting a cornucopia, and the piping Pan behind her can be identified.

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