Gluttony from a set of The Seven Deadly Sins
Pieter Coecke van Aelst
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The great Renaissance artist, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, conceived this series as a spectacular procession of sinners spread across seven tapestries of monumental scale. Each tapestry is dedicated to a particular vice, or Cardinal Sin, represented in female form riding a carriage, surrounded by a colorful retinue of personalities from classical history, mythology and the Bible, embodying the corruption in question. Here, winged Gluttony, wine-leaves in her hair, seated in her harpy-drawn chariot, is preceded by the gourmands Cleopatra, Alexander the Great and Silenus, whilst young Bacchus leads the way. In the background, the Old Testament heroine, Judith, can be seen dispatching the drunken Holofernes, in a vignette of the virtue of Temperance overcoming its sinful counterpart. Although it is not known who owned this particular tapestry, many editions of Coecke’s Seven Deadly Sins series were woven in Brussels and were acquired by great collectors like Henry VIII, King of England and Mary of Hungary, Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. Although the palette remains so strikingly intense, recent technical analysis reveals that the dyes, metal-wrapped threads and weaving technique are all synonymous with mid-sixteenth century production. This border was added during a later, probably nineteenth-century, restoration.
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.