Thanks to ongoing improvements, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is showcasing an abundance of European decorative arts in new galleries
It is an unusually exciting time at the MFA. The new Art of the Americas Wing was inaugurated in November 2010, and with it came many other museum transformations. In addition to the recent opening of the Rabb Gallery dedicated to twentieth-century European painting and sculpture and the Italian Renaissance Gallery highlighting maiolica, sculpture, furniture, and bronze, the MFA's exquisite collection of eighteenth-century decorative arts has been re-installed in a new Eighteenth-Century European Decorative Arts and Sculpture Gallery. The gallery features approximately three hundred objects (furniture, ceramics, textiles, sculpture, glass, musical instruments, metalwork, and paintings) grouped in creative arrangements by culture, medium, and theme, and highlights a number of important acquisitions made in recent years. Several are shown here.
Perhaps the most significant object in the new gallery is this console table of about 1761 to 1763, a tour de force of monumental rococo sculptural faience produced by the Spanish royal factory, Real Fábrica de Loza de Alcora, Spain's leading producer of fine ceramics in the eighteenth century. The only known example of its kind, the table was commissioned by the tenth Count of Aranda, who inherited the factory from his father in 1742 and, judging by factory records, most likely intended the table for a room decorated exclusively in faience, including wall panels, chandelier, furniture, brackets, and decorative figures. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, porcelain was often an important element in interior decoration, indicating one's status and wealth, as well as one's abilities and trustworthiness in business. The count may well have been inspired to create such a room by Carlos III's "porcelain room" at the Royal Palace of Aranjuez near Madrid, decorated with soft-paste porcelain plaques made by the Buen Retiro factory. At the MFA, the table is positioned with other Alcora ceramics, including a rare wall plaque with an elaborate rocaille frame of the same period and very likely commissioned for the count's room. Mirrors were often incorporated into the schematic decoration of such rooms to create an illusionary effect of multiplication by reflecting the porcelain from all directions.1 That a mirror would originally have been placed behind the MFA's table is suggested by the interrupted scrolling cartouche decoration on the back corners of the top, which would have been completed in the reflection.
A set of five lavish silk and raised gold embroidered and appliquéd liturgical vestments made in Vienna about 1760 is also handsomely displayed in the new gallery. Including a chasuble (pictured), cope with hood, chalice veil, maniple, and burse, the set was possibly commissioned by Empress Maria Theresa. Worked in rich, yet gentle colors well suited to the elaborate church interiors of the period, all five pieces are in remarkable condition. 
The chasuble, a vestment most often worn during the celebration of the Mass, incorporates patterns of naturalistic flowers, small blossoms, curving leaves, scrolls, and cornucopia-all characteristic of late baroque ornamentation.2 Vestments such as these were often made by a women's religious order or school that specialized in this type of highly intricate embroidery. One can imagine the glorious effect of the metallic thread and salmon-colored lining when seen by candlelight. Under Maria Theresa (r. 1740-1780), and strongly influenced by the French court, the textile industry was nationalized and the importation of foreign fabrics was prohibited, allowing Vienna to become an important center for the manufacture of luxury textiles.3
Gemellion, Artist unknown, Limoges, France, 13th century Champlevé Enamel on Copper, 8 7/8” diameter Collection of The Walters’ Art
» View All