Design for an Overdoor Decoration (recto); Rinceaux (verso)

Gregorio de' Ferrari

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This sheet contains two ideas for the decoration of a frame in which a satyr takes center stage. In the design on top a satyr mask is being crowned with a laurel wreath by two cherubs while in the lower design, a vase decorated with satyr masks is placed centrally on top of the frame and is flanked by the figures of two young satyrs. Because only a small part of the frame below is shown, it is hard to tell what kind of frame this was meant to be, although the heavy ornament on top suggest that it is most likely an architectural frame for a door or a window. The artist, Gregorio de’ Ferrari, is known to have made designs for the interior, most notably in the Palazzo Rosso along the prestigious Strada Nova in Genoa. He worked there together with Domenico Piola, for whose family workshop De’ Ferrari also designed tombs, altars, textiles, silver, ship decorations and frontispieces.

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