Walls, Towers, and Gates of Amsterdam

Jacob Savery I

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This drawing by Jacob Savery depicts the medieval city walls at the eastern border of Amsterdam, which were in the process of being torn down to make way for the ever-expanding city. The drawing was previously thought to be by Pieter Bruegel the Elder; Bruegel’s authorship, however, has been excluded as he died decades before 1590, when the vegetation visible next to the round building in the center of the picture was planted. Savery lived in Amsterdam from 1589 until the time of his death in 1603 and would have been able to observe these plantings.

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