Sprite

Donatello

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1436 a fountain was furnished for a courtyard in the Florentine house of Cosimo de' Medici, long before it was transformed into the grandiose palace of today. Records show that a stonecutter, Betto d'Antonio, supplied the fountain and a painter, Antonio, was paid for gilding a spiritello (a sprite, sometimes with angelic overtones) that surmounted it. That spiritello was almost certainly this quirky baby. Its sculptor, closely familiar with Donatello's bronze angels made for the Baptistery of Siena in 1429, breezily mixed together traits of Mercury, the god of commerce beloved by the Medici, with those of Zephyr, the west wind that Florentines always welcome in May.

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