Album of Drawings

Filippo Juvarra

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This album contains a collection of drawings by Juvarra, a celebrated architect who transformed Turin in the early eighteenth century. Some of the most impressive among the architectural sketches are designs for idealized cityscapes, occasionally so large as to require a foldout sheet. Often interpreted as stage designs, such drawings were also appreciated as artworks in their own right for their demonstration of both imagination and skill.

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