The Dusk (one of a pair)

Michelangelo Buonarroti

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The origin of these (see also 1971.206.35), as of the numerous other reduced versions of Michelangelo's brooding personifications on the Medici tombs, is a vexed issue. The style of this pair differs markedly from Michelangelo's own; the careful surfaces and precise, formalized delineation of the musculature and hair suggest a late mannerist Florentine source, but an eighteenth-century origin in the north has also been proposed.

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