Verscheyde Constige Vindigen om in Gout, Silver, Hout en Steen te wercken (Plate 9)

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 silver powder box after Lutma contains a great amount of information about its construction, showing both a side view and the decorations on top of the lid as well as two views of the cupid-shaped grip and a more simple variation.

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