Elogia virorum literis illustrium...

Paolo Giovio

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This posthumous edition of the historian Paolo Giovio's Elogia is the first to unite his brief biographical sketches with the portraits that inspired them. The high number of Muslim figures included among the military leaders is not surprising given that Giovio wrote a commentary on the Turks in 1532 and included a "Turkish room" in the museum he established in Como. Giovio's portrait of Mehmet II, said to have been derived from a model by Gentile Bellini, shows the influence of Ottoman prototypes that depict the sultan smelling a rose. The profile and folded ear, however, correspond to an Italian medal produced in Constantinople in the 1460s.

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