Design for the Verso of a Pendant with a Flower-Piece at Bottom Center

Jan Collaert I

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vertical panel with the design for a pendant verso at center. The ornament is decorated with a flower-arabesque pattern, with a vase sprouting scrolling tendrils set on a ground at bottom center. Flanking the central motif are axe-shaped ornaments at top left and right, and triangular ornaments at bottom left and right. These smaller pairs of motifs may be 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

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