Various Cartouche Designs

Various Cartouche Designs

Francisco Herrera, the Younger ("El Mozo")

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Fourteen prints with cartouche designs by Francesco Herrera the Younger, pasted into the album, two to a page. One of the prints on page 50 of the album stands out from the group. It shows a design for a cartouche with a crown, and is further decorated with a cherub and two hanging festoons. The central compartment is shaped for the inclusion of a coat of arms, but left blank. The other thirteen prints contain larger cartouches that differ in form and execution. The style of engraving is loser, and in certain areas outlines are fully omitted or only executed with a stylus. The prints are all cut within the plate marks at various sizes, which makes it difficult to tell whether they all derive from one and the same series. Only one set of 12 prints is known (documented in SKB Berlin 1939), but the number of plates in this album suggests that Herrera issued more than the single set. Herrera likely made the prints while in Italy. That Herrera's stay in Rome coincided with the production of the prints appears to be confirmed by their use as frontispieces in several manuscripts kept in the Santa Maria in Monserrato degli Spagnoli in Rome. Their presence in this album may be taken as further evidence of this sequence of events. For Herrera's prints, see Navarrete Prieto 2023.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.