Portfolio Cover for a Group of Drawings showing Porcelain Vessels

Anonymous, French, 18th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Portfolio cover consisting of a folio sheet of paper, folded double. On the front cover, a sheet of paper has been attached with descriptive titles in both French and German in different hands. On the verso of this sheet is another German inscription, in yet another hand. The folio appears to be a reused sheet which was formerly part of an album. On the verso of the cover is a modern inscription in German referring to a drawing or print that was taken out and refiled under the Rembrandt School (Eeckhout). The portfolio was used to house a group of 18th-century drawings, predominantly of porcelain vessels, which were sent to Albert, Duke of Saxe-Teschen and the Archduchess Maria Christine, governors of Belgium from 1780-1790, to show the latest designs available in Paris, Vienna, and England and to choose objects for the decoration of the Chateau de Laeken (outside Brussels in the area formerly called Schoonenberg, now the Belgian Royal Palace).

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