View of Heidelberg

Jan Brueghel the Elder

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This drawing, the earliest known by Jan Brueghel the Elder, records the city of Heidelberg seen from the west across the Neckar River. The castle appears as it did before additions were made between 1590 and 1592. Brueghel's sketch dates from about 1588-89, when the artist traveled from Antwerp to Italy, arrriving in Naples in 1590. The definition of forms with a combination of short, vertical lines in fine pen, which in places are blurred, and the broadly applied translucent washes are characteristic, as is the composition. Brueghel made several drawings of Heidelberg and used motifs from these travel sketches in paintings such as the Allegory of Spring of 1611 (private collection, Scotland), which shows Heidelberg castle as it appears in a copy after a drawing by Brueghel in the Kurpfalzisches sketchbook (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art