Horizontal Panel Design with a Man, a Snake and a Female Fantastical Creatures Interspersed between Acanthus Rinceaux

Horizontal Panel Design with a Man, a Snake and a Female Fantastical Creatures Interspersed between Acanthus Rinceaux

Anonymous, Italian, Venetian, 17th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Design for a horizontal panel filled with a meandering acanthus rinceau. In the middle a male figure with his hair pulled back has been depicted whose lower body consists of acanthus leaves. He is holding one of the rinceaux and looks towards a fantastical creature with a female head, a long neck and a short body that ends in acanthus leaves. Above their heads a snake with a bird-like beak is portrayed.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Horizontal Panel Design with a Man, a Snake and a Female Fantastical Creatures Interspersed between Acanthus RinceauxHorizontal Panel Design with a Man, a Snake and a Female Fantastical Creatures Interspersed between Acanthus RinceauxHorizontal Panel Design with a Man, a Snake and a Female Fantastical Creatures Interspersed between Acanthus RinceauxHorizontal Panel Design with a Man, a Snake and a Female Fantastical Creatures Interspersed between Acanthus RinceauxHorizontal Panel Design with a Man, a Snake and a Female Fantastical Creatures Interspersed between Acanthus Rinceaux

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.