Plate 12: Allegory on the Discord in France, from Caspar Barlaeus, "Medicea Hospes"

Pieter Nolpe

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Henry IV as Hercules repairing the broken globe by forging a band around it. Minerva and Mars assist him at left while Marie de Medici stands to the right. The female personification of France at far left and the Olympian gods looking down from above. One of a series of sixteen plates showing the festivals and ceremonies in honor of Marie de Medici's visit to Amsterdam from August 31 to September 5, 1638. Illustration to Caspar Barlaeus, "Medicea Hospes", Amsterdam, 1638.

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