Sofa (canapé à confidents)

Claude I Sené

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A sofa of this type, with a wide central section and a single outward-facing seat at each end, was called a canapé à confidents, although a design less likely to encourage exchange of confidences would be hard to imagine. Examples were made primarily in the Louis XV and Louis XVI periods, and only a small number survive. However impractical, the form was highly decorative, and it appears in designs for neoclassical wall elevations where the shape and carving are conceived in harmony with the wall paneling.[1] On the present piece, the carving on the wreaths of roses and olive branches tied by a ribbon at the top of each end is particularly skillful. This canapé has been described by both the comte de Salverte and Guillaume Janneau as Sené's finest known piece of furniture in the Louis XVI style. [Bill Rieder, 1984] Footnotes: [1] An example by Richard de Lalonde in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, is illustrated in World Furniture, ed. H. Hayward, New York, 1965, p. 124, fig. 453.

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