King David the Poet

King David the Poet

Sir Edward Burne-Jones

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This panel of King David, with three other panels also decorated with figures of poets (Homer, Chaucer, and Dante), was made for windows in the breakfast room at Silsden, a house in Yorkshire built for textile manufacturer Charles Hastings. This was one of the first commissions given to Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., the firm that William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and others had co-founded in 1861 to revive the arts and crafts of the pre-Renaissance era (which would subsequently develop into the more successful Morris & Co in 1875). Burne-Jones designed the figures and Morris designed the daisy and forget-me-not plants for the rectangular quarries forming the background.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

King David the PoetKing David the PoetKing David the PoetKing David the PoetKing David the Poet

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.