Boiserie from the Palais Paar, 30 Wollzeile, Vienna, Austria

Isidor Canevale

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The paneling of this room comes from the Palais Paar, which stood at Wollzeile 30, in Vienna, until 1938. The large, quadrilateral Baroque palace with a central courtyard was built about 1630 for the postmaster of the Holy Roman Empire, Baron Johann Christoph von Paar. Behind the twelve large windows above the two entrances of the main facade were four large staterooms. These rooms and the living quarters on the same floor were completely remodeled between 1765 and 1771 for Count Wenzel Joseph Johann von Paar by the architect Isidor Canevale (1730–1786) and the sculptor Johann Georg Leithner (1725–1785). The Museum’s paneling is composed of elements from at least two rooms, which recent paint analysis has shown were originally painted in different shades of gray. The Museum’s room epitomizes the last phase of rococo before it was subsumed by the Louis XVI style.

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