Landscape with Architecture

Isaac de Moucheron

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In Holland at the turn of the eighteenth century, the taste for more elaborate room decoration created a demand for large landscapes, including imaginary garden scenes. This drawing by Isaac de Moucheron, dated ca. 1730, illustrates an imaginary Italianate garden filled with classical architecture and statuary. Beautiful in its own right and much sought after by collectors, the main idea and composition of this drawing may have been used for a larger wall design, carrying the nostalgic atmosphere of a lost arcadia into the Northern European mansion.

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