Design for Knife Handles with the Temptation of Adam and Eve and a Memento Mori Scene

Design for Knife Handles with the Temptation of Adam and Eve and a Memento Mori Scene

Johann Theodor de Bry

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Panel with two knife handle designs, both with scenes under arches at top. The motif at left shows Adam and Eve tempted by the snake, after a design by Heinrich Aldegrever (Bartsch VIII.363.3). The scene at right shows a man with a rose before the seated figure of Death, shown as a skeleton, and is based on a design by Jan Saenredam after Hendrik Goltzius (Bartsch III.258.123). 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 the Temptation of Adam and Eve and a Memento Mori SceneDesign for Knife Handles with the Temptation of Adam and Eve and a Memento Mori SceneDesign for Knife Handles with the Temptation of Adam and Eve and a Memento Mori SceneDesign for Knife Handles with the Temptation of Adam and Eve and a Memento Mori SceneDesign for Knife Handles with the Temptation of Adam and Eve and a Memento Mori Scene

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.