Decoration for a Thesis in Honor of Saint Francis Solano in two parts: the top part with Saint Francis Solano with his arms raised and a sun in his hands with Mount Potosí at right, the lower part with the doctor of the church holding a banner and two putti below

Decoration for a Thesis in Honor of Saint Francis Solano in two parts: the top part with Saint Francis Solano with his arms raised and a sun in his hands with Mount Potosí at right, the lower part with the doctor of the church holding a banner and two putti below

Stefano della Bella

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This exceedingly rare print was made for a theological thesis defense that took place in Rome’s Franciscan convent of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in 1639. The event was dedicated to the Spanish jurist and diplomat Buenaventura de Salinas y Córdoba (1592–1653) and celebrated the Spanish friar Francis Solano (1549–1610), a Franciscan missionary who spent his life among indigenous populations in the Viceroyalty of Peru. In the top sheet, Solano is shown with his arms raised, as if supporting the sun that rises between Peru’s two most important cities: Lima, its capital, and Potosí, whose abundant silver mines were the principal source of Spain’s wealth in the period. In the bottom sheet, the sixteen theses to be disputed flank an image of the seminal Franciscan theologian Duns Scotus (1266–1308).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Decoration for a Thesis in Honor of Saint Francis Solano in two parts: the top part with Saint Francis Solano with his arms raised and a sun in his hands with Mount Potosí at right, the lower part with the doctor of the church holding a banner and two putti belowDecoration for a Thesis in Honor of Saint Francis Solano in two parts: the top part with Saint Francis Solano with his arms raised and a sun in his hands with Mount Potosí at right, the lower part with the doctor of the church holding a banner and two putti belowDecoration for a Thesis in Honor of Saint Francis Solano in two parts: the top part with Saint Francis Solano with his arms raised and a sun in his hands with Mount Potosí at right, the lower part with the doctor of the church holding a banner and two putti belowDecoration for a Thesis in Honor of Saint Francis Solano in two parts: the top part with Saint Francis Solano with his arms raised and a sun in his hands with Mount Potosí at right, the lower part with the doctor of the church holding a banner and two putti belowDecoration for a Thesis in Honor of Saint Francis Solano in two parts: the top part with Saint Francis Solano with his arms raised and a sun in his hands with Mount Potosí at right, the lower part with the doctor of the church holding a banner and two putti below

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.