The Imperial Eagle (Aquila Imperialis)

Hans Burgkmair

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Crowned double-headed eagle, with a series of seven roundels descending at each side (at left, the six days of creation; at right, the seven mechanical arts). Below these are the escutcheons of the Empire (left) and Austria (right). At center, a fountain topped with Emperor Maximilian I on a throne, the nine muses in the basin at center, and Philosophia and the Seven Liberal Arts above the Judgment of Paris on the base. At top and bottom, excerpts of text by Conrad Celtis.

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