Footed beaker

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On this beaker, bold auricular scrolls form cartouches with bundles of foliage and fruits. It seems that the goldsmith intended the points where the scrolls meet to evoke a grotesque mask, with punched pyramidal eyebrows above the nostrils, and an open, heart-shaped mouth from which a leaf-shaped tongue emerges. Literature Important English and Continental Silver. Sale cat., Sotheby’s, New York, April 16, 1997, p. 60, no. 122. (Unidentified maker’s mark P.?; perhaps similar to Elemér Kőszeghy. Magyarországi ötvösjegyek a középkortól 1867-ig / Merkzeichen der Goldschmiede Ungarns vom Mittelalter bis 1867. Budapest, 1936, no. 878.) [Wolfram Koeppe 2015]

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