Embroidered panel with Grotesque decoration

Bernard Salomon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

An example of the kind of work [Catherine de Medici] appreciated is the Museum's panel of yellow satin embroidered with silk threads. One of a set of three (the others are in the Musée Historique des Tissus, Lyon), it hung as a valence around the top of a four-poster bed. Various print sources were culled for the airy design of grotesques, while its five vignettes derived from Ovid's Metamorphoses- based on the myths of Europa, Actaeon, Semele, Pyramus, and Salmacis- are adapted from woodcut illustrations published by Bernard Salomon in Lyon in 1557. Its brilliant colors, exquisite design, and sumptuous material would have suited the queen's taste perfectly.

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