Lunar-shaped Ring Bezel and Grotesque Figures

Noël Rouillard

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Although this is a very small print, it has been very finely cut by the artist Noël Rouillard. He was the son of a goldsmith, but it is unclear whether he ever actually worked as a goldsmith himself. He did however publish several print series with designs related to this profession. This print comes from a series of twelve such prints and shows a design for a lunar-shaped ring bezel in its center. Rouillard combined this design with several other motifs such as the fantastical creatures depicted on all four sides of the central motif.

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