Plate V, from "Choix de Coquillages et de Crustacés"

Franz Michael Regenfuss

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Nuremberg artist Regenfuss was fascinated by exotic natural-history objects. As early as 1745, he began to plan for an illustrated book dedicated to shells and crustaceans but, due to several setbacks, was not able to realize the project until 1758, after relocating to Denmark. There he found the support of Count Adam Gottlob von Moltke, who had himself compiled a famous cabinet of shells, and who successfully recommended Regenfuss as engraver to the king. Regenfuss’s publication was extremely popular thanks to the unprecedented large size of the prints and the almost three-dimensional effect of the illustrations. The latter feat was achieved through the careful application of color, most of which was done by his wife, Margaretha Helena.

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