Pendant in the form of a parrot

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A comparable pendant from an inventory preserved in the Archivo del Real Monasterio in Guadalupe, Spain, is illustrated by Priscilla E. Muller, who noted that parrots were preferred subjects for Spanish Renaissance jewels and that another Spanish inventory of 1559 described one of “green-enameled gold” with “a pearl as its body, two suspended from its wings, a third atop the jewel.”[1] Some of the feathers of the Linsky parrot jewel show evidence that they have been reenameled in blue and red over the translucent green with which they were originally enameled. A piece of mother-of-pearl fitted to the back of the bird may have been added when the jewel was reenameled. Footnotes: [1] P. E. Muller, Jewels in Spain, 1500–1800, New York, 1972, pl. IV, pp. 76-77. [Clare Vincent, The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1984, p. 182, no. 99]

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