Pluto and Cerberus

Giovanni Battista di Jacopo

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The god of the underworld is posed at the mouth of hell with his fierce three-headed companion, Cerberus, who exhibits the features of a spaniel, a lion, and a wolf. Pluto has lost the spear on which he leaned. Rosso Fiorentino, a painter and a printmaker, was prominent among the Italian artists lured to France by François I. His drawing for Pluto was engraved several times. This cast is probably the one that belonged to the great seventeenth-century sculptor and collector François Girardon.

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