Editorial Review
The Metropolitan Museum owns approximately fifteen thousand drawings and 1.5 million prints. The Department of Drawings and Prints focuses almost exclusively on works of graphic art produced after the Middle Ages in Western Europe and in North America. The collection of drawings is known particularly for its works by Italian and French artists of the fifteenth through the nineteenth century. One corollary of its impressive scope is that artists whose paintings are extremely rare—such as Michelangelo, Pontormo, and Altdorfer—are represented at the Metropolitan by splendid sheets that demonstrate their fluency with chalk, ink, and wash. The collection of northern Gothic and Renaissance prints is one of the finest in the world, and eighteenth-century Italian and nineteenth-century French prints are richly represented. Also in the department's care are more than twelve thousand illustrated books and a comprehensive collection of designs for Renaissance and Baroque architecture and the decorative arts.
