Horizontal Panel Design with Five Hybrid Creatures and a Lion.

Anonymous, Italian, Venetian, 17th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Design for a horizontal panel filled with a male central figure seen from the back. He holds a club and directs his attention towards a lion on the left. Surrounding him are four more male hybrid creatures whose lower bodies end in acanthus leaves. One of them embraces the lion as though they were wrestling. On the verso, part of the acanthus rinceau of 66.602.11(17) has been copied in leadpoint.

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