Gloves

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gloves are replete with associations to love, honor, and loyalty, and these accessories played an important symbolic role in the portraiture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As a surrogate for their owner, gloves could be indicative of both romantic love or political allegiance, as when a woman's glove was bestowed upon her chosen contestant to be worn in a tournament. The gauntlets on this pair of gloves contain small birds and flaming hearts, surely symbols of romantic devotion. The symbol of the flaming heart in a cartouche also appears in a Dutch collection of embroidery designs for fashionable accessories, dating to the 1620s, in the Museum's collection.

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