Splendore delle virtuose giovani, page 14 (recto)

Iseppo Foresto

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Designed by Iseppo Foresto, published by Jeronimo Calepino, Venice. From top to bottom, and left to right: Design composed of 3 vertical columns printed upon a grid. Left column is decorated in the center with an ornamented urn, which is surrounded by coiling vines of leaves and grapes, among which are feeding putti and doves. Middle column is decorated with a wavy vine with an alternating pattern of white dotted and solid black leaves. Right column is decorated with a central white dotted fleur-de-lis sitting upon curving leaves that connect on both sides to a coiling stem of diverse leaves.

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