The Wedding Feast of Cupid and Psyche
Pierre Reymond
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Enameling is a technique whereby a vitreous substance, often containing pigment, is fused with metal to produce a glossy surface. Limoges became a center for enameling as early as the twelfth century, when the art flourished in monastic workshops. In the late fifteenth century, this city in central France emerged as a center of secular as well as ecclesiastical enamelwork, and the school flourished throughout the sixteenth century. Among the most famous and prolific of the enamel painters practicing in sixteenth-century Limoges was Pierre Reymond (1513–after 1584), the author of this dish. Reymond's mastery of his medium is evident in the rich tonal range, the accurate modeling of his figures, and the sense of life and action. The restricted palette, in which white, black, and red are combined into rich, varied gray tones—hence the name grisaille painting—is enlivened by the decorative use of gold. The lip of the dish is remarkable for its rich vegetal decoration from which varied figures emerge. Reflecting Reymond's pride as an artist, the dish prominently displays his initials and the date 1558. Renaissance humanists interpreted the wedding of Cupid and Psyche, a subject drawn from The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius (born ca. 124 A.D.), as the union of desire and soul.
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.