View of the Villa Borghese

Simon Felice

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Standing at the center of the park on the Pincian Hill with a circumference of almost four miles, the Villa Borghese was Rome's ultimate entertainment retreat. Today, as the Galleria Borghese it houses an important collection of paintings and classical sculpture. Commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the villa was built by Flaminio Ponzio and Giovanni Vansanzio (Jan van Zanten) in the early seventeenth century. Filled with statues and vases, its decorative outer facades resemble a scenae frons, exemplifying the highly theatrical aspect of Roman Baroque villa architecture, also characteristic of the Villa Medici and the Villa Doria Pamphilj.

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