Ornament design for a thesis, the Strozzi coat of arms at top

Ornament design for a thesis, the Strozzi coat of arms at top

Stefano della Bella

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A young man leads a group of maidens toward the Strozzi coat of arms, held upon a rocky outcrop between a lion and an eagle. This youth gestures to a Latin banderole translated as "force, glory, and honor," proclaiming the rewards the noble family received as the dedicatee of the print. The figures hold a terrestrial globe, a celestial globe, a compass, and an armillary sphere, representing humanity’s attempts to chart the earth and the cosmos. An allegorical river god reclines in the right corner, evoking the bodies of water that were navigated using such knowledge. This kind of a print, which addresses the general pursuit of knowledge, would have been suitable for thesis defenses in various subjects.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ornament design for a thesis, the Strozzi coat of arms at topOrnament design for a thesis, the Strozzi coat of arms at topOrnament design for a thesis, the Strozzi coat of arms at topOrnament design for a thesis, the Strozzi coat of arms at topOrnament design for a thesis, the Strozzi coat of arms at top

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.