Longitudinal Section of Great Throne Room (Saint George's Hall), Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg

Longitudinal Section of Great Throne Room (Saint George's Hall), Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg

Giacomo Quarenghi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Prominent among Jayne Wrightsman’s later donations are architectural designs connected to the glory days of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great (1672–1725) and Catherine the Great (1729–1796). Notably, both rulers installed a Westernized court culture in Russia, modeled after French, German, and Italian examples. The grandeur of their cultural enterprises must have interested the Wrightsmans, who visited Russia several times during the Cold War period. Among the designs they donated to the Museum are various drawings by the celebrated Italian architect Quarenghi, who spent most of his career in Russia and left a distinctive mark on the architecture of the empire.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Longitudinal Section of Great Throne Room (Saint George's Hall), Winter Palace, Saint PetersburgLongitudinal Section of Great Throne Room (Saint George's Hall), Winter Palace, Saint PetersburgLongitudinal Section of Great Throne Room (Saint George's Hall), Winter Palace, Saint PetersburgLongitudinal Section of Great Throne Room (Saint George's Hall), Winter Palace, Saint PetersburgLongitudinal Section of Great Throne Room (Saint George's Hall), Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg

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.