Pendant Design with Mars Standing in a Niche

Pendant Design with Mars Standing in a Niche

Jan Collaert I

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vertical panel with a pendant design at center, a scene containing the figure of Mars, wearing a helmet and holding a spear, under a niche at center and surrounded by a flower-arabesque pattern. The ornament hangs from a ribbon and has three pearls descending from the bottom and left and right sides. At bottom left and right, circular ornaments that may have been designs for earrings or buttons. From a set of ten plates with pendant designs, five of which show deities in niches. Four designs in the series are decorated exclusively with ornate flower-arabesques and are most likely designs for pendant versos. This plate belongs to the first edition, published by Hans I Liefrinck in Antwerp before 1573. Jan Collaert I produced several series of plates with pendant designs, a practice continued by his son, Adriaen Collaert.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pendant Design with Mars Standing in a NichePendant Design with Mars Standing in a NichePendant Design with Mars Standing in a NichePendant Design with Mars Standing in a NichePendant Design with Mars Standing in a Niche

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.