Hermione invoking Minerva

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The intaglio is one of six known fakes at the Met from the storied gems collection of Prince Stanislaw Poniatowski of Poland. Carried out in a classicizing style indebted to Antonio Canova, the gem bears a false signature intended to announce its authorship by one of the celebrated carvers of ancient Greece. The deception of the Poniatowski gems – most of which are nineteenth-century forgeries – was discovered in 1895. The Museum’s six were mounted in velvet boxes by Tiffany & Co.

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