Console table

Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

With its pierced legs and finely carved details, this table represents Neoclassical Piedmontese furniture at the highest level of quality. It shows the combined influences of French and Italian furniture often present in furniture of this region, which in the eighteenth century was the Kingdom of Savoy, an independent state that was artistically as French as it was Italian. It has been attributed to Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo (1745–1820), one of the leading cabinetmakers in Turin at this period, who worked chiefly on royal commissions. However, recent research has unveiled a number of contemporary furniture makers whose style was very similar. The composition is closely related to the designs of Michelangelo Pergolesi (d. 1801), the prolific Italian master of Neoclassical ornament. The vignette of Leda and the Swan in the frieze is directly derived from his designs.

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