Astronomicum Caesareum

Astronomicum Caesareum

Michael Ostendorfer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This most sumptuous of all Renaissance instructive manuals explained the use of the astrolabe (for calculating the altitude of stars) and other instruments used for computing planetary positions. The author, court astronomer to Emperor Charles V, also provided new observations on the comet of 1531 (Halley's Comet). Only about forty copies of this work survive; very few still have the seed pearls that were originally attached to the string markers on each of the eighteen disks.

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.