Snuffbox

Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This snuffbox is notable for the high quality of its painting and for the ambitiousness of its decorative scheme. The exterior of the cover is painted with a view of Munich copied from a painting by Bernardo Bellotto of 1761, and the sides and bottom of the box are decorated with views of south German castles associated with the Bavarian court. Among the structures depicted are those at Schieissheim, Fürstenried, Dachau, Lichtenberg am Lech, and Nymphenburg, the latter housing the small porcelain manufactory where this snuffbox was made. The castles on the snuffbox are based on water colors by Maximilian de Geer (1690-1768) that in turn were copies of paintings by Franz Joachim Beich (1665–1748), the court painter in Munich. The interior of the box displays a scene of a deer hunt on Lake Starnberg and, unusu ally, a finely detailed lozenge pattern evoca tive of the contemporary textiles that often lined a coffer's interior. The decoration of the box's gold mounts includes the letter S, presumably the initial of the as-yet-unknown original owner of this small yet highly refined luxury object.

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