Female statuette

Leonhard Kern

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Kern was a talented German carver whose individualistic classicizing style displays signs of his study in Italy. Court sculptor to the elector of Brandenburg, he specialized in small-scale works for collectors' cabinets, often producing variants in ivory, wood, and stone. The heavy features, calm stance, and compact, full body of this figure are typical of his naturalistic, monumental style, as is the simplicity of surface, markedly different from the more agitated and detailed approach of his contemporaries. The rubbed areas of remaining paint suggest an intention to imitate bronze.

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