Napoleon III on Horseback, Inaugurating the Boulevard de Strasbourg

François-Joseph-Hubert Ponscarme

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is the specimen that was shown in the 1967 exhibition at the hôtel de la Monnaie in Paris, "La Medaille en France de Ponscarme a la fin de la Belle Epoque," an exhibition that did much to rekindle interest in Ponscarme and his contemporaries. The casting faithfully captures in an almost impressionistic way the flickering surfaces of the wax model that preceded it. The deed commemorated is the completion of one of the broad new thoroughfares of Second Empire Paris, the boulevard de Strasbourg, which leads to the Gare de l'Est, its pointed roof visible here at the vanishing point. Baron Haussmann, city planner par excellence, is the gentleman nearest the equestrian emperor.

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