Dame Grecque, dans son Apartement, plate 68 from "Recueil de cent estampes représentent differentes nations du Levant"

Dame Grecque, dans son Apartement, plate 68 from "Recueil de cent estampes représentent differentes nations du Levant"

Jean Baptiste Vanmour

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print is from a set of 100 plates representing different nations of the Levant. They are based on small paintings commissioned from the Flemish painter Jean Baptiste Vanmour by the Marquis de Ferriol (1652-1718), the French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1699-1710. Upon his return to Paris, Ferriol partnered with the publisher Jacques Le Hay to have the set engraved for publication. The set was widely disseminated throughout Europe and was in part responsible for the vogue for turquerie, or European images of Turkish life, a form of exoticism popular in the rococo period.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dame Grecque, dans son Apartement, plate 68 from "Recueil de cent estampes représentent differentes nations du Levant"Dame Grecque, dans son Apartement, plate 68 from "Recueil de cent estampes représentent differentes nations du Levant"Dame Grecque, dans son Apartement, plate 68 from "Recueil de cent estampes représentent differentes nations du Levant"Dame Grecque, dans son Apartement, plate 68 from "Recueil de cent estampes représentent differentes nations du Levant"Dame Grecque, dans son Apartement, plate 68 from "Recueil de cent estampes représentent differentes nations du Levant"

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.