Spring

David Vinckboons

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hessel Gerritsz was active primarily as a mapmaker but early in his career he produced and published a few prints after the main landscapist of his day in Amsterdam, David Vinckboons. This series of four prints combines a traditional theme, the seasons depicted with their associated activities – working the garden in spring, boating in summer, harvesting in autumn, and ice skating in winter – with depictions of monuments in the Dutch countryside. Here, each image is set against a depiction of a castle in the outskirts of the city of Utrecht. Both elegant figures and peasants populate the scenes. An intense interest in depiction of the monuments and countryside of the United Provinces, a federation of provinces that had recently declared its independence from Spain, took hold during the early seventeenth century.

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