Interior of a Library, from Nouveaux Liure da Partements, part of Œuvres du Sr. D. Marot

Daniel Marot the Elder

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Interior of a library with windows at left and bookshelves lining the walls. A door at the left side of the far wall shows through to another room, and a chair and desk appear before a fireplace set in the right wall. A series of globes and busts line the top of the bookshelves. From a group of five plates, out of a series of six prints with designs for the interior decoration of rooms and detailed designs for textiles.

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