The Feast of the Resurrection in Piazza Navona, Rome, 1650

The Feast of the Resurrection in Piazza Navona, Rome, 1650

Dominique Barrière

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

View of the Feast of the Resurrection in Piazza Navona, Rome, during the Jubilee year of 1650. The print shows the Piazza from the south. The celebration and the ephemeral architecture were sponsored by the Spanish community in Rome. The arches and colonnade shown in the print were designed by Carlo Rainaldi (1611-91) who also organized the celebrations. Fireworks are issuing from the structures that enclosed the two fountains in the square and many people parade within and around the perimeter. Numbers and letters along the bottom margin identify the permanent buildings and temporary structures.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Feast of the Resurrection in Piazza Navona, Rome, 1650The Feast of the Resurrection in Piazza Navona, Rome, 1650The Feast of the Resurrection in Piazza Navona, Rome, 1650The Feast of the Resurrection in Piazza Navona, Rome, 1650The Feast of the Resurrection in Piazza Navona, Rome, 1650

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.