Design for a Wall-mounted Epitaph

Giovanni Larciani ("Master of the Kress Landscapes")

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Design for a wall-mounted epitaph or memorial tablet with a rectangular central compartment for an inscription (here left blank). The frame of the epitaph is built up out of architectural elements in high relied, executed in the late Baroque style typical of Northern Italy at the end of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. It is further decorated with slim garlands of leaves that runs along the top and bottom of the frame. Their yellow tone may indicate it was to be gilded.The epitaph is presented here against a brick wall.

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