Design for a Ceiling Decoration with Chinoiserie Scenes

Anonymous, Italian, 18th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Design for the trompe l'oeil decoration of a ceiling with architectural elements in a late Baroque/early Rococo vocabulary. Only a quarter of the ceiling is represented with the exception of the central niche at lower right, which has been completed in order to display the full figure group that fills the niche. The figures and attributes are inspired by Asian examples and fall into the genre generally referred to as chinoiseries. In combination with the architectural elements this likely suggests a dating in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. The location for which this ceiling design was intended is unknown.

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