Armrest

Beauvais

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This tapestry panel is part of a set of twelve armchairs and two settees ordered in Paris in 1753 by Baron Johann Ernst Bernstorff, Danish ambassador to the court of Versailles between 1744 and 1751. After returning to Denmark, Bernstorff commissioned this seat furniture for the tapestry room of his new residence in Copenhagen that was hung with four wall tapestries of the Amours des Dieux series woven at the Beauvais Manufactory. The tapestry covers are woven with animal and bird subjects after designs by the painter Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686–1755). For a fuller description of the entire set, see, e.g., MMA 35.145.1.

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