Italian View: A Pathway and Arbor at the Base of Cliffs

Friedrich Salathé

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

By planting the viewer firmly on the ground, Salathé emphasizes the imposing height of the cliffs in this unusual landscape of the Roman countryside. The artist first traveled to Rome in 1815 and remained there until 1821. The Swiss draftsman later established himself as a printmaker in Paris, and he may have squared this drawing for the purpose of making a print, although the uneven nature of the grid is curious.

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