Verscheyde Constige Vindigen om in Gout, Silver, Hout en Steen te wercken (Plate 2)

Michiel Mosyn

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The publisher Cornelis Danckerts was clever enough to quickly pick up on the popularity of print series showing designs in the Auricular Style. Taking full advantage of the wide demand, he compiled a series after all the first important protagonists of the style, such as the Van Vianen brothers, Van den Eeckhout and Lutma. This design for a ewer seems closest to objects made by Adam van Vianen, although it might be a free adaptation rather than a piece by the master himself. Just like in other prints from this series, variants are given to stimulate inspiration in other artists. Here we see two different ideas for the shaping of the stem of the ewer, in which the position and head of the monster-like creature are slightly altered.

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