Design for a Cartouche with a Variant
1732–1802
Medium
Pen and black ink
Dimensions
7 x 8-5/8 in. (17.8 x 21.9 cm)
Classification
Drawings|Ornament & Architecture
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1952
Accession Number
52.570.103
Tags
Art Historical Context
Carlo Bianconi’s *Design for a Cartouche with a Variant* offers a charming glimpse into the decorative imagination of eighteenth-century Europe. Created with pen and black ink on a modest sheet measuring just 7 by 8-5/8 inches, the drawing presents an ornamental frame—known as a cartouche—alongside an alternate version. Such designs were essential tools for architects and craftsmen, who used them to embellish everything from palace ceilings and garden gates to printed books and funerary monuments. Bianconi, an Italian draftsman active during the late Baroque and early Neoclassical periods, ex...
About the Artist
Carlo Bianconi · 1732–1802
Italian scholar and archivist; first secretary of the Reale accademia di Brera. Comment on works: painter; sculptor