A Woman from Altmark

A Woman from Altmark

Melchior Lorck

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Parallel to the interest in the trades and professions evinced in Jost Amman's Ständebuch of 1568 were the investigations into costume during the sixteenth century undertaken by artists such as Enea Vico, Cesare Vecellio, Hans Holbein the Younger, and Melchior Lorch. A Danish draftsman, engraver, painter, architect, and author, Lorch had a highly productive career that ranged from Denmark to Turkey. This drawing is one of a group of fifteen costume studies, each characterized by a geometrical conception of form and a stark background against which the costume is displayed. They were probably intended as models for woodcuts. The annotation Altte Marke indicates the locale from which the costume originated: a district around 75 miles east of Berlin.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.