Fontana di Mercurio nel Giardino del Gran Duca di Toscana (...), from 'La Fontane di Roma nelle Piazze e Luoghi Publici (...)', part 3, 'Le Fontane ne' Palazzi di Roma' (plate 9)

Fontana di Mercurio nel Giardino del Gran Duca di Toscana (...), from 'La Fontane di Roma nelle Piazze e Luoghi Publici (...)', part 3, 'Le Fontane ne' Palazzi di Roma' (plate 9)

Giovanni Francesco Venturini

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The various Roman villas of the important papal families, including the Villa Borghese, Villa Medici, and Villa Doria Pamphilj, were filled with an impressive array of antique artifacts and statues, both originals and copies after the antique. Venturini's print of the rear facade of the Villa Medici, remodeled in 1576–86 by Bartolomeo Ammanati, illustrates how loggia and garden are used as an open-air museum. Fully decorated with antique plaques, statues, and fountains, it included the classical-inspired fountain with Giambologna's elegant statue of Mercury (1564), a copy of which still graces the loggia today. These sculptures formed part of a group of no less than 170 pieces acquired in the late sixteenth century by Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici from various notable Roman collectors. It included the impressive two Medici lions, shown here behind the statues of Silenus with the infant Bacchus and the Venus de' Medici, today displayed respectively in the Loggia dei Lanzi and the Tribuna of the Uffizi in Florence. See 1991.1073.145(52-79) for more information.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Fontana di Mercurio nel Giardino del Gran Duca di Toscana (...), from 'La Fontane di Roma nelle Piazze e Luoghi Publici (...)', part 3, 'Le Fontane ne' Palazzi di Roma' (plate 9)Fontana di Mercurio nel Giardino del Gran Duca di Toscana (...), from 'La Fontane di Roma nelle Piazze e Luoghi Publici (...)', part 3, 'Le Fontane ne' Palazzi di Roma' (plate 9)Fontana di Mercurio nel Giardino del Gran Duca di Toscana (...), from 'La Fontane di Roma nelle Piazze e Luoghi Publici (...)', part 3, 'Le Fontane ne' Palazzi di Roma' (plate 9)Fontana di Mercurio nel Giardino del Gran Duca di Toscana (...), from 'La Fontane di Roma nelle Piazze e Luoghi Publici (...)', part 3, 'Le Fontane ne' Palazzi di Roma' (plate 9)Fontana di Mercurio nel Giardino del Gran Duca di Toscana (...), from 'La Fontane di Roma nelle Piazze e Luoghi Publici (...)', part 3, 'Le Fontane ne' Palazzi di Roma' (plate 9)

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.