Varij Disegni de Camini de Gabineti [sic]

Giorgio Fossati

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The series "Varij Disegni de Camini de Gabineti" [sic] contains designs for chimney pieces by the Swiss-born, Italian architect Giorgio Domenico Fossati. While Fossati is principally known for his illustrations of the architectural treatises of Renaissance architects such as Palladio and Vignola, he was also active as an architect and designer himself. This print series with designs for chimney pieces, issued in 1740 just after his move to Venice, is one of the rare examples in which he published some of his own ideas. It is one of very few ornament prints to have been published in Italy in the eighteenth century, and has recently been credited with a role of influence on the young Piranesi, who would later publish his own "Diverse maniere d'adornare i cammini" in 1769. The full series consists of a title page and eleven plates, each showing one design, paired with depictions of human figures, putti and/or burning fires by the hand of Francesco Fontebasso. The Museum's series is incomplete and lacks four prints.

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.