Design for the right half of a chimneypiece

Design for the right half of a chimneypiece

Anonymous, Italian, 17th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

By the seventeenth century, chimneypieces had become an important object of design within the interior. Examples in late Renaissance and early Baroque styles were often highly sculptural, heavily ornate and very colorful feats of design bravura. The love for the theatrical, which characterized the Baroque period, meant that a certain level of monumentality was pursued. In that respect, these two drawings show designs of a relatively modest nature, although colored marbled and gilding could transform their final look dramatically.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Design for the right half of a chimneypieceDesign for the right half of a chimneypieceDesign for the right half of a chimneypieceDesign for the right half of a chimneypieceDesign for the right half of a chimneypiece

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.