Museums (ArtBase) - A glazed terra-cotta relief by the Renaissance sculptor Andrea della Robbia came loose overnight from its perch above a doorway at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and crashed to the stone floor below, suffering serious damage, museum officials said last week.

The fractured 15th-century sculpture, a 62-inch-by-32-inch blue-and-white lunette depicting St. Michael the archangel in a traditional pose, holding a sword and scales, was found early on Tuesday by a guard on regular rounds. Officials said that a preliminary examination of the sculpture indicated that it could be repaired. Museum spokesman Harold Holzer, said the sculpture, which had been displayed over the doorway in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Galleries since 1996. The St. Michael was commissioned around 1475 for the church of San Michele Arcangelo in Faenza, a town between Bologna and Ravenna in Italy. The church was dismantled around 1798, and the lunette was later owned by private collectors. The Met bought it in 1960 at an auction of the collection of Myron C. Taylor, who had been chairman of the United States Steel Corporation. It is not the first time a sculpture has fallen and broken at the museum. In 2002 a 15th-century marble statue of Adam by the Venetian sculptor Tullio Lombardo crashed to the ground in the Velez Blanco Patio, scattering its arms, legs and an ornamental tree trunk into dozens of pieces.