Designs for Terms

Jean Mignon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1544 Hugues Sambin was at Fontainebleau, where a group of artists active as printmakers was making creative designs emerging from the court available to a wider audience through etchings. There is no evidence that Sambin was involved with this project, but he likely owned some of their etchings and was inspired by their endeavors. These designs for terms, etched by Mignon, one of the most creative and prolific etchers of ornament in the group, might have appealed to him in particular. Also emerging from this circle was Jacques Androuet Ducerceau, an architect, designer, and printmaker from whom Sambin might have taken his lead.

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