The Cravat

Capodimonte Porcelain Manufactory

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The subject of this group is uncertain. When recorded in 1935, it was entitled Rosaura and the Doctor, thereby identifying it as a scene from an Italian Comedy play in which one of the heroines, or Innamorate, attends her father, the Doctor. (The Innamorate were assigned different names in different scenarios: Rosaura is mentioned by the Venetian writer Carlo Gozzi in his memoirs, published in 1797.) One of the four original masks, or central characters, of the commedia dell’arte, the Doctor is traditionally costumed in a short black cloak, a wide white neck ruff, and a flat-brimmed black hat, thus calling into question the identification here. What Is certain, however, is the quiet drama of the composition, in which the younger woman gently assists the older man in his dressing. The group is otherwise unrecorded; this example is conspicuous among Capodimonte models for the discreet richness of the painting and gilding.

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