Horizontal Panel Design with Two Hybrid Creatures Interspersed between Acanthus Rinceaux

Anonymous, Italian, Venetian, 17th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Design for a horizontal panel with a meandering rinceau. In the upper left corner two hybrid creatures with human faces have been placed. The one on the left has wings for arms and wears a feathered head. The one on the right looks like a sphinx and his lower body morphs into a tail of acanthus leaves.

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