Portici della piazza di S. Pietro di Roma. Plate 44 from the Album 'Basilica di S. Pietro in Vaticano'

Giovanni Battista Bonacina

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Floor plans, aerial view and frontal view of the arcade in front of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. The aerial view shows that it concerns an earlier, not executed, stage of the plans in which the square would almost have been closed off completely by a third part of the arcade on the far side of the square. The scale of the images has been indicated below. Explanation of the different designs and measurements are given on the left and right. In the middle, on two banners held up by angels, the reason for the erection of the arcade is explain in Latin and Italian.

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