Crouching Flora

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Carpeaux’s first important public commission was to embellish the attic exterior of the Louvre’s Pavillon de Flore with a high relief of the Triumph of Flora, personifying the benefits of the goddess’s realm over spring and plants, and by implication, the benefits of life under the regime of the Second Empire. Numerous clay models of nubile young women led up to the final configuration in limestone.

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