The Metropolitan Museum's Collection of Artworks Depicting Horses

The horse is a domesticated animal that has been used by humans for thousands of years. There are many different breeds of horses, each with its own unique characteristics. The Metropolitan Museum has a large collection of artworks depicting horses, from ancient sculptures to modern paintings. These artworks provide a glimpse into the different ways that horses have been represented by cultures around the world.

Enameled and Gilded Bottle

    This bottle is remarkable because it is large and delicate.
    Few such large or painterly examples of enameled glass are known.
    The polychrome phoenix on the neck soars above the central scene of mounted warriors wielding maces, swords, and bows.

Box with Romance Scenes

    This coffret illustrated with scenes from Arthurian and other courtly literature of the Middle Ages is one of the most imposing examples to survive.
    The lid represents the assault on the metaphorical fortress, Castle of Love, with a tournament and knights catapulting roses.
    The left end depicts Tristan and Isolde spied upon by King Mark, and a hunter killing a unicorn trapped by a virgin.
    The right end shows a knight rescuing a lady from the Wildman (Wodehouse), and Galahad receiving the key to the castle of maidens.
    At the back are Lancelot and the lion, Lancelot crossing the sword bridge, Gawain asleep on the magic bed, and the maidens welcoming their deliverer.
    The newly discovered front panel (1988.16), lost since before 1800, is a poignant depiction of the love tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe (two scenes at right) and Aristotle teaching Alexander the Great and Phyllis riding on the back of Aristotle (two scenes at left).

"Farhad Carves a Milk Channel for Shirin", Folio 74 from a Khamsa (Quintet) of Nizami of Ganja

    Shirin has an ardent admirer in the talented sculptor and stonemason, Farhad.
    When Shirin desires milk from a herd of goats that graze in a distant field, Farhad sets to work cutting a channel from the goats' mountain pastureland to a pool at the foot of Shirin's palace.
    In this painting, Shirin visits Farhad upon his completion of the pool.
   At the very top of the composition, a goat cavorts in its hillside home.

Roadside Halt

    Set in Normandy, this canvas of 1826 is painted with a fluidity and lightness akin to watercolor, a medium in which Bonington excelled.

A Huntsman and a Peasant Woman by the Isar River with a View of Munich

    This picture exemplifies Kobell's small, jewel-like Begegnungsbilder, or "encounter pictures," which depict meetings between peasants, mounted horsemen, or gentry, usually in scenic locales in the southeast German region of Bavaria.
    Here, a hunter and his dog (a Riesenbracke) appear alongside a small boy and a young peasant woman who wears the traditional costume of the region around Munich.
    Behind them is a sweeping view across the banks of the Isar River toward the city's skyline.
   Kobell made a companion painting to this one, now in the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The Villa Loredan, Paese

    Guardi rarely painted views of the Venetian mainland, and this is one of his most successful.
    Buildings, plantings, and figural groups punctuate the calm, verdant plane of the lawn that, in tandem with the sky, gives the impression of a vast, open space.
    The work is one of a set of four painted for John Strange (1732 - 1799), author, antiquarian, naturalist, connoisseur, and diplomat, who served as the official British Resident in Venice between 1773 and 1788.

Cows Crossing a Ford

    The painting is of a landscape with a low horizon and broadly painted sky.
    The painting is of interest to Dupré because it fits the description of an "expansive and true composition" recently painted "on the spot" in the Limousin region of central France.
    The painting was first owned by Paul Périer, an early supporter of Dupré as well as his colleagues Théodore Rousseau and Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps.

Wolf and Fox Hunt