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Willem Vosterman

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Printed by Willem Vosterman. From top to bottom, and left to right: Design composed of 2 vertical columns; each column has a gridded background. Left column is decorated with a curving vine of leaves and fruit. Right column is decorated with a curving vine of leaves and flowers. Below these two columns is a frieze ornamented in the center with a winged putto who flies above a small flower with 2 stems that curve outward.

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