Perspectival Drawing of a Column Base with Cube

Peter Flötner

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

For Renaissance artists, the representation of geometry was often a means of testing and perfecting their ability to work convincingly in perspective. A common trope was to rotate forms or stack them against or atop one another as a means of displaying the maker’s skill at visualizing an object from multiple angles within a single image. Here, a hollow rectangular cuboid balances on an ornamental plinth, presenting perspectival geometry as the modern paradigm of beauty and proportion.

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