New Inventions of Modern Times [Nova Reperta], The Invention of Clockwork, plate 5

Theodoor Galle

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

First plate from a print series entitled Nova Reperta (New Inventions of Modern Times) consisting of a title page and 19 plates, engraved by Jan Collaert I, after Jan van der Straet, called Stradanus, and published by Philips Galle. Illustration of a sailor (Vespucci) coming to shore and discovering America. He encounters a native woman seated in a hammock. In the background different figures are seated on the ground; a woman roasts a human leg on a wood-burning fire. In the middle ground on the right a horse and a bear approach one another. In the foreground on the right an anteater searches for food. On the left a ship rocks in the ocean and another is pushed up against the shore.

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.