Design for Knife Handles with 'Sine Cerere et Baccho Friget Venus' and a Couple Shaking Hands

Design for Knife Handles with 'Sine Cerere et Baccho Friget Venus' and a Couple Shaking Hands

Johann Theodor de Bry

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Panel with two knife handle designs, both with scenes with two figures under arches at top. The design at left bears the inscription SINE CERERE ET BACCHO FRIGET VENVS, (Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus Would Freeze) around a scene depicting a female and male figure walking left. Below, an oval with a female figure surrounded by children. The design at right shows a male and female holding hands over a basin, while a putti pours water over their joined hands from above. Both designs have a blackwork background with grotesques. From a series of twelve plates.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Design for Knife Handles with 'Sine Cerere et Baccho Friget Venus' and a Couple Shaking HandsDesign for Knife Handles with 'Sine Cerere et Baccho Friget Venus' and a Couple Shaking HandsDesign for Knife Handles with 'Sine Cerere et Baccho Friget Venus' and a Couple Shaking HandsDesign for Knife Handles with 'Sine Cerere et Baccho Friget Venus' and a Couple Shaking HandsDesign for Knife Handles with 'Sine Cerere et Baccho Friget Venus' and a Couple Shaking Hands

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.