Sylvanus from The Rural Gods

Cornelis Cort

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This engraving is from a set of six oval-shaped prints that depict Pastoral Gods. It was published by Hieronymus Cock (ca. 1510–1570) whose name is inscribed on the rock at the right. Cock began publishing in Antwerp in 1548, and his firm became the most important one outside Italy. He made a few of the plates himself, but most were commissioned from designers and engravers. The author of this composition, Frans Floris, designed many prints for Cock. Cort may also have been an apprentice within Cock’s establishment. The series of Pastoral Gods were made in Antwerp in 1565, the year Cort left for Italy.

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