Plate 22: Emperor Charles V, victory at Pavia; from Guillielmus Becanus's 'Serenissimi Principis Ferdinandi, Hispaniarum Infantis...'

Jacob Neeffs

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On January 28, 1635, the city of Ghent celebrated the entry of Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Spain, the recently appointed governor of the Southern Netherlands. A group of Flemish artists were commissioned to create paintings for the decoration of two triumphal arches erected in the city's main square for the occasion. Though the majority of these canvases are now lost, the engravings in Guillielmus Becanus's 'Serenissimi Principis Ferdinandi, Hispaniarum Infantis, S.R.E. Cardinalis, Triumphalis Introitus in Flandriae Metropolim Gandavum', Antwerp [1636], illustrate what the series looked like. The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns 34 plates from the set of 42.

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