Design for a Monumental Altar, Plate 'q' from 'Unterschiedliche Neu Inventierte Altäre mit darzu gehörigen Profillen u. Grundrißen.'

Design for a Monumental Altar, Plate 'q' from 'Unterschiedliche Neu Inventierte Altäre mit darzu gehörigen Profillen u. Grundrißen.'

Jacob Gottlieb Thelot

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ornament print with a design for a monumental altar. The altar table is flanked by two elaborate bundled pillars that project outward. Two fantastical butresses reach up to the pediment. The central axis is marked by two compartments meant for paintings, which have been left blank in the design. The floorplan for the altar is depicted directly below the elevation. 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 a Monumental Altar, Plate 'q' from 'Unterschiedliche Neu Inventierte Altäre mit darzu gehörigen Profillen u. Grundrißen.'Design for a Monumental Altar, Plate 'q' from 'Unterschiedliche Neu Inventierte Altäre mit darzu gehörigen Profillen u. Grundrißen.'Design for a Monumental Altar, Plate 'q' from 'Unterschiedliche Neu Inventierte Altäre mit darzu gehörigen Profillen u. Grundrißen.'Design for a Monumental Altar, Plate 'q' from 'Unterschiedliche Neu Inventierte Altäre mit darzu gehörigen Profillen u. Grundrißen.'Design for a Monumental Altar, Plate 'q' from 'Unterschiedliche Neu Inventierte Altäre mit darzu gehörigen Profillen u. Grundrißen.'

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.