The Sacrifice of Isaac

Reinhold Vasters

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The size and shape of this pendant suggests that its model was not a Renaissance jewel, but perhaps instead an ornamental cartouche from the rim of a Mannerist silver basin, a plaquette of gold, silver, or rock crystal from a jewel casket, or a book cover. The ornament on the frame and the back of the pendant is a mixture of decorative motifs that were in vogue at several different periods during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The central pattern on the back, ultimately derived from sixteenth-century Moresque ornament, is comparable to one of Reinhold Vasters’s designs for a pendant in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, but the identity of the maker of this pendant remains uncertain. [Clare Vincent, The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1984, p. 199, no. 119]

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