De gli habiti antichi et moderni di diversi parti del mondo, libri due ...

Cesare Vecellio

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Cesare Vecellio, who joined the workshop of his famous cousin Titian before 1548, was active as a publisher by 1570. This book contains 420 illustrations of costumes (exotic and domestic) by the woodcutter Christoph Krieger and marks the culmination of a trend that began in the mid-sixteenth century with a series of costume engravings by Enea Vico. The first section of his book covers European dress, including Ottoman Turkey, while the short section on Africa and Asia includes the costume of Persians, Moors, and Arabs. Here the book is open to Vecellio's engraving of La favorita del Turco. The elegantly dressed woman is probably meant to be Roxelane, a beautiful concubine who became the favorite wife and confidant of the Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (r. 1520–66).

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