Allegory of America

Philip Tideman

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This detailed drawing served as a final study for a decorative cartouche in a map of America printed by Carel Allard in 1696. A German print designer and painter who worked primarily in Amsterdam, Tideman here borrowed motifs already in circulation: the native pouring gold, the giant lizard at the feet of the indigenous woman, and her feather headdress and skirt all echo the Nicolaes Berchem's print for the frontispiece of the second volume of John Blaeu's Atlas Maior (1662). Tideman embellished the iconography by adding to the scene decorative feathers as well as plants and animals native to the Americas, such as the pineapple and the armadillo.

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