Various Designs for Rocaille Ornaments, Plate 1 from an Untitled Series of Rocaille Ornaments for Frames

Various Designs for Rocaille Ornaments, Plate 1 from an Untitled Series of Rocaille Ornaments for Frames

Jacob Gottlieb Thelot

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ornament print with designs for rocaille ornaments, including one large ornament forming the top right corner of a frame or arch and four loose rocailles. This print is bound in an album containing 27 series with a total of 122 ornament prints from the fund of the prominent Augsburg publisher Martin Engelbrecht.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Various Designs for Rocaille Ornaments, Plate 1 from an Untitled Series of Rocaille Ornaments for FramesVarious Designs for Rocaille Ornaments, Plate 1 from an Untitled Series of Rocaille Ornaments for FramesVarious Designs for Rocaille Ornaments, Plate 1 from an Untitled Series of Rocaille Ornaments for FramesVarious Designs for Rocaille Ornaments, Plate 1 from an Untitled Series of Rocaille Ornaments for FramesVarious Designs for Rocaille Ornaments, Plate 1 from an Untitled Series of Rocaille Ornaments for Frames

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.