Ornamento delle belle & virtuose donne, page 8 (verso)

Matteo Pagano

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published by Matteo Pagano, Italian, 1515-1588, Venice, bound by Lloyd, Wallis & Lloyd, British, active London after 1821. From top to bottom, and left to right: Design composed of 3 vertical columns printed upon a grid. Left column is decorated with a line of 3 diamonds containing different images: top diamond contains image of a vase with a flower, middle diamonds contains image of composite human creature with plant stem legs, and bottom diamond contains image of double-headed bird. Middle column is decorated with 2 intertwining black lines that form overlapping diamonds with smaller diamonds in the center. Right column is decorated with a wavy line of black triangles.

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