Design for an Altar, Plate 1 from an Untitled Series of Designs for Altars

Design for an Altar, Plate 1 from an Untitled Series of Designs for Altars

Jacob Gottlieb Thelot

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ornament print with a design for an altar in frontal elevation. The base of the altar is left undecorated, safe for a small rocaille ornament in the right variant. The top of the altar is heavily decorated with rocaille ornaments and candelabras and characterized by a bust on a pedestal depicted in the central opening or niche. 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

Design for an Altar, Plate 1 from an Untitled Series of Designs for AltarsDesign for an Altar, Plate 1 from an Untitled Series of Designs for AltarsDesign for an Altar, Plate 1 from an Untitled Series of Designs for AltarsDesign for an Altar, Plate 1 from an Untitled Series of Designs for AltarsDesign for an Altar, Plate 1 from an Untitled Series of Designs for Altars

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.