Richmond Palace

Wenceslaus Hollar

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

View of Richmond palace with towers surmounted by cupolas seen across the Thames slightly to right; walled garden, square barn, fields and crane on the left houses and church tower on the right; the king, the queen and their three children with five attendants landing from barge moored to old tree in the foreground

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