The Celestial Globe-Southern Hemisphere

The Celestial Globe-Southern Hemisphere

Albrecht Dürer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This woodcut of the southern sky is based on maps of the stars drawn by an anonymous artist living in Nuremberg in 1503. Recalculated to reflect the stellar positions of 1515, Dürer's celestial maps were the first ever published and attest to the role that Nuremberg played as a center for printing, as well as for the manufacture of scientific instruments.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Celestial Globe-Southern HemisphereThe Celestial Globe-Southern HemisphereThe Celestial Globe-Southern HemisphereThe Celestial Globe-Southern HemisphereThe Celestial Globe-Southern Hemisphere

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.