Chasuble

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Though, at first glance, this chasuble– the tabard-like garment worn by a Catholic priest during church services– resembles sixteenth-century work, it can be attributed to artisans working in the mid-nineteenth century. The velvet is thin, low quality and relatively modern; gold-colored braid has been stitched to it to evoke the much more complicated multiple-piled patterning of a Renaissance 'cloth of gold'. The embroidery of the central orphrey panel is well-executed, using the same techniques as much earlier works, but the designs reveal a nineteenth-century sweetness in their aesthetic, especially facial features, and the raw materials are, again, of much lower grade quality, resulting in the degradation around the chest area, a result of wear-and-tear from when this was worn by the priest.

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