Collection of French Costume Designs or Portrait Types; Title Page

Collection of French Costume Designs or Portrait Types; Title Page

Anonymous, French, 18th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Oval cartouche decorated by a garland of roses and ribbons, with two circular insets featuring a waistlength female portrait type in late eighteenth-century costume with a fichu and a oversized bonnet. ThetTitle inscription, originally done in graphite is partly erased and has become illegible.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Collection of French Costume Designs or Portrait Types; Title PageCollection of French Costume Designs or Portrait Types; Title PageCollection of French Costume Designs or Portrait Types; Title PageCollection of French Costume Designs or Portrait Types; Title PageCollection of French Costume Designs or Portrait Types; Title Page

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.