Valentine

Anonymous

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is a tiny folded, cameo-embossed, open-work lace paper; there is a faint, illegible embossed maker's name on the left edge, recto. The lace pattern has a zig-zag border, a cameo-embossed bow in the lower half, and on the top portion, a circle, bordered with embossed roses. It is on that circle that a chromolithographed die-cut scrap of a bouquet, with the word, "HOPE". has been affixed. Atop the bow is a small scarp of a young girl carrying a pitcher on a tray. Verso, which is plain, is part of the same piece of folded paper. Inside, is inserted a piece of paper, brightly chromolithographed in a colorful gothic pattern of red, yellow, pink, green, and purple. The white center is printed with a romantic verse.

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art