Orpheus seated playing his lyre, and charming the animals

Orpheus seated playing his lyre, and charming the animals

Peregrino da Cesena

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The earliest known Italian engravings are niello prints. The design was taken from a small, incised silver plaque the engraved lines of which were filled with a dark, enamel-like substance that when pressed in to the paper produced the image. The plaques decorated household and liturgical objects. Originally used by goldsmiths to check work in progress, the prints soon became valued in their own right. Peregrino engraved metal plates in the same style and scale as the niello plaques specifically to create printed images.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Orpheus seated playing his lyre, and charming the animalsOrpheus seated playing his lyre, and charming the animalsOrpheus seated playing his lyre, and charming the animalsOrpheus seated playing his lyre, and charming the animalsOrpheus seated playing his lyre, and charming the animals

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.