Parnassus

Art Historical Context

Nestled in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, *Parnassus* is a delicate bronze plaquette crafted around 1560–65 by an unknown French or Flemish artist. Measuring just 3 3/8 × 7 1/8 inches, this intimate relief likely evokes the mythical Mount Parnassus, home of Apollo and the Muses in classical antiquity. The tags hint at a gathering of male and female figures—poets, gods, and inspirations—celebrating the Renaissance humanist revival of Greek mythology as a symbol of artistic and intellectual pursuit. Bronze plaquettes like this one were a Renaissance inn...