Renaissance-style mortar

Vincenzo Grandi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mortars were produced in fair abundance throughout northern Italy. In the central zone of the Linsky mortar, classical swags of meandering ribbons and firmly modeled cornucopias enframe alternating griffins and stags. The ornamentation closely resembles that of mortars (such as one in the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin) also attributable to the workshop of Vicenzo and Gian Gerolamo Grandi by analogy with the highly worked bronze utensils, including buckets and bells, which they produced in Trent for Bishop Bernardo da Cles between 1532 and 1539. The relatively spacious design of the mortar may indicate that it was made at a slightly later date, when the Grande were relocated to Padua—between 1542 and the death of Vicenzo in 1577/78.

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