Perspectival Cross-Section of a Venetian Palace

Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1836 and 1837 the young architect Viollet-le-Duc traveled through Italy and became especially enamored with Venice, which he greatly preferred over Rome. He admired the way the principles of the Byzantine and the Gothic styles had merged with the classical tradition in Venetian architecture and how the overabundant Rococo seemed to have had little influence. Years later, when he had become a true champion of Neo-Gothic architecture, he treated Venice in his famous publication Entretiens sur l’architecture (Discourses on Architecture). In this preparatory sketch for plate 32, Le-Duc opens up the faade of the building to show the interior structure of a Venetian palace.

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.