Triple-back settee (part of a set)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This settee is from a large set of seat furniture, which included at least four settees and twenty side chairs. It was formerly thought to have been commissioned for the Villa Palagonia at Bagheria near Palermo, but the provenance remains undocumented, and the initials in the cipher at the center of the back, "PPL," are as yet unidentified. The reverse-painted glass panels in imitation of agate, lapis, and marble are a distinctive feature often used on late-eighteenth-century Neoclassical Sicilian furniture.

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