Imperial Double Eagle with the Coat of Arms of Ingolstadt, Freiburg, and Tübingen, from Joan. Eckii Theologi in summulas Petri Hispani extemporaria et succincta atque succosa explanatio p[ro] sup[er] ioris Germaniae scholasticis

Hans Burgkmair

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Double-headed eagle with three coat of arms below for the university-towns of Ingolstadt, Feiburg, and Tübingen. This impression comes from the title-page of Johann Eck's "Joan. Eckii Theologi in summulas Petri Hispani extemporaria et succincta atque succosa explanatio p[ro] sup[er] ioris Germaniae scholasticis," published by Johann Miller in Augsburg in 1516. The block was also used in two other works published by Miller in Augsburg: "Aristoteles, Dialectica" (1517) and "Elementarius Dialectica" (1518).

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.