Altra Vedvta in Prospettiva del Teatro et Giardino Contigvo di Mondragone in Frascati (...), from 'La Fontane di Roma nelle Piazze e Luoghi Publici (...)', part 2, 'Le fontane delle ville di Frascati' (plate 18)

Altra Vedvta in Prospettiva del Teatro et Giardino Contigvo di Mondragone in Frascati (...), from 'La Fontane di Roma nelle Piazze e Luoghi Publici (...)', part 2, 'Le fontane delle ville di Frascati' (plate 18)

Giovanni Battista Falda

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Villa Mondragone belongs to one of the most impressive, still surviving villa estates laid out at Frascati. Situated on an imposing terrace against the northwestern slope of the ancient Tusculum Hill, it enjoyed breathtaking vistas of the Roman countryside. The owners, first Cardinal Altemps and then, from 1613 onward, Scipione Borghese, derived their prestige from the villa's architectural improvements, paid for, in part, by profits from their agricultural undertakings. One of the central features, overlooking the private garden, or giardino segreto, with its boxwood parterres, was the water theater, which still survives in a slightly dilapidated form. Built for Cardinal Scipione Borghese by the Roman architect Giovanni Vansanzio (Jan van Zanten) in ca. 1618, this semicircular structure is reminiscent in form and decoration of Carlo Maderno's water theater at the Villa Aldobrandini. See 1991.1073.145(34-51) for more information.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Altra Vedvta in Prospettiva del Teatro et Giardino Contigvo di Mondragone in Frascati (...), from 'La Fontane di Roma nelle Piazze e Luoghi Publici (...)', part 2, 'Le fontane delle ville di Frascati' (plate 18)Altra Vedvta in Prospettiva del Teatro et Giardino Contigvo di Mondragone in Frascati (...), from 'La Fontane di Roma nelle Piazze e Luoghi Publici (...)', part 2, 'Le fontane delle ville di Frascati' (plate 18)Altra Vedvta in Prospettiva del Teatro et Giardino Contigvo di Mondragone in Frascati (...), from 'La Fontane di Roma nelle Piazze e Luoghi Publici (...)', part 2, 'Le fontane delle ville di Frascati' (plate 18)Altra Vedvta in Prospettiva del Teatro et Giardino Contigvo di Mondragone in Frascati (...), from 'La Fontane di Roma nelle Piazze e Luoghi Publici (...)', part 2, 'Le fontane delle ville di Frascati' (plate 18)Altra Vedvta in Prospettiva del Teatro et Giardino Contigvo di Mondragone in Frascati (...), from 'La Fontane di Roma nelle Piazze e Luoghi Publici (...)', part 2, 'Le fontane delle ville di Frascati' (plate 18)

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.