View Above Handeck, Switzerland

Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Architect, theorist, and draftsman, Viollet-le-Duc spent the last years of his life living in Switzerland, where he worked on the restoration of the Cathedral of Lausanne and on preparing a map of the Mont Blanc massif. The map was published in 1876 with a "study of its geodesic and geological construction, its transformations, and the old and modern state of its glaciers." Although executed in an area outside the focus of the map, this drawing relates to those made for that project, combining the careful, analytical approach to recording the terrain with a more painterly and evocative use of the watercolor medium.

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