The Egg Seller from a set of the Italian Village Scenes

François Boucher

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Images of gardens were popular in the tapestry medium from the medieval era, where the so-called mille-fleurs (thousand flowers) (see also 2013.506) provided a decorative, and sometimes symbolic, setting for scenes of romance and play. Park and garden tapestries continued to enjoy popularity throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly for the decoration of more intimate chambers, where they provided a pleasant contrast with the grander subject matter of tapestries used in more formal settings. The theme enjoyed new popularity with the advent of the Rococo style during the eighteenth century, and a number of highly decorative landscape and garden series were produced in French and Netherlandish workshops during the second third of the eighteenth century. Among the most notable was the series of romantic pastorals that Boucher designed for the Beauvais workshops between 1734 and 1736 (64.165.1–.8). Known as the Fetes Italiennes, and loosely inspired by the idyllic park scenes of Antoine Watteau, this series depicted handsome gentlefolk and peasants in idealized exterior settings.

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