Means by which the large blocks of travertine and marble were lifted during the construction of the large Tomb of Caecilia Metella, tome 3, tavola 53 from "Le Antichità Romane" (Roman Antiquities)

Means by which the large blocks of travertine and marble were lifted during the construction of the large Tomb of Caecilia Metella, tome 3, tavola 53 from "Le Antichità Romane" (Roman Antiquities)

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

While Piranesi was at work on the Antichità Romane, the result of years of research into the highly developed engineering skills of the Romans, the first threats to Roman preeminence were heard. In the early 1750s, certain French and British scholars and architects had begun to assert that the Romans were mere imitators of the Greeks, under whom all the arts had attained perfection. A desire to defend the Romans from this charge may lie behind the exaggeration that appears in some of the plates of this publication—here Piranesi makes the mausoleum appear much larger than it actually is and exaggerates the difficulty of its construction. This page provides a good example of Piranesi's novel illustrative techniques: he represents three supplemental views on scrolls of paper hung behind the primary scene, while playfully undermining the illusion he has created by making the hook on the left scroll overlap the edge of the sheet.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Means by which the large blocks of travertine and marble were lifted during the construction of the large Tomb of Caecilia Metella, tome 3, tavola 53 from "Le Antichità Romane" (Roman Antiquities)Means by which the large blocks of travertine and marble were lifted during the construction of the large Tomb of Caecilia Metella, tome 3, tavola 53 from "Le Antichità Romane" (Roman Antiquities)Means by which the large blocks of travertine and marble were lifted during the construction of the large Tomb of Caecilia Metella, tome 3, tavola 53 from "Le Antichità Romane" (Roman Antiquities)Means by which the large blocks of travertine and marble were lifted during the construction of the large Tomb of Caecilia Metella, tome 3, tavola 53 from "Le Antichità Romane" (Roman Antiquities)Means by which the large blocks of travertine and marble were lifted during the construction of the large Tomb of Caecilia Metella, tome 3, tavola 53 from "Le Antichità Romane" (Roman Antiquities)

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.