Chimera

<p>This sumptuously colored, circular plaque depicts a chimera, a mythical hybrid of multiple animals, launching into the air from a rocky precipice with a nude woman clinging to him. It is the earliest and largest surviving product of the five-year collaboration between painter <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artists/35824/gustave-moreau">Gustave Moreau</a> and enameler Frédéric Charlot de Courcy. In enamel painting, vitreous powders are mixed with a volatile oil, painted onto a metal support, and fired in a kiln. Artists, collectors, and critics admired the material’s jewel-like surfaces, bright colors, and ability to appear variably translucent and opaque.</p>