The Architecture of A. Palladio in Four Books containing a Short Treatise on the Five Orders (L'Architecture de A. Palladio en quatre livres... / Il quattro libri dell'architettura)

Andrea Palladio

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Palladio's treatise, republished in this lavish two-volume edition by Giacomo Leoni in London (1715) as The Architecture of A. Palladio in Four Books, with refined prints by Bernard Picart and John Harris, greatly influenced the classical idiom typical for eighteenth-century Georgian building style in England. This is evidenced by the building projects and publications of the foremost architects of the period, including Richard Boyle, third earl of Burlington; his protégé the landscape designer William Kent; and the famous author Colen Campbell, whose book Vitruvius Britannicus (1715) became the model for Palladian architecture in England.

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