Ruins of the Imperial Palaces in Rome

Joseph Anton Koch

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Koch’s precise delineation—first in graphite, then reinforced in ink—of the Roman landscape in this drawing exemplifies the artist’s Neoclassical style of draftsmanship. He presents a view from the southeast that includes in the middle ground the Palaceof Severus, four arches of the Aqua Claudia, and the Arch of Constantine. In the distance lie the campanile of Santa Francesca Romana, the Torre delle Milizie, and, at the highest point, the Capitoline Hill. In 1810 Koch published his Vedute Romane, a series of twenty etchings, with number eighteen derived from this drawing.

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