Wilton Garden, plate 1
Isaac de Caus
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The garden of Wilton House (Wiltshire), famous today for its eighteenth-century landscape design containing England's first Palladian bridge, was originally laid out in the mid-1630s by the French-born Isaac de Caus (active 1623–55). It was commissioned by Philip Herbert, fourth earl of Pembroke, pivotal figure of the intellectual circles at court, to which the architect Inigo Jones (1573–1652) belonged. Recognized for having brought the classical style to England, Jones may well have been involved in Wilton's building campaign, given its Italianate components. In this plate, De Caus's garden view, framed by onlookers in the foreground, provides an elevated prospect of the entire geometric layout, stretching from the north, across the full length of the building facade, toward a balustraded grotto at the southern end. The strictly enclosed, rectangular layout consists of three main parts symmetrically aligned around a broad central axis. Starting with a compartment of parterres de broderie nearest the house, the middle section contains a wooded area or wilderness, usually placed at the end but in this case situated so as to hide the irregular flow of the River Nadder. The large hippodrome-shaped section comprising the third part of the garden is inspired by Greco-Roman architecture. The statues and waterworks, executed by Nicholas Stone, also follow classical Italian precepts.
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.