The Virgin Mary

Germain Pilon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This figure comes from a Crucifixion group in which the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist would have flanked Christ on the Cross. The slender proportions and flowing drapery folds relate closely to Germain Pilon’s Mourning Virgin (ca. 1585), commissioned by Catherine de Médicis (1519–1589) for her funerary chapel at Saint-Denis.

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