Design of a fireplace
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
Sheet (Trimmed): 15 7/8 × 9 7/16 in. (40.4 × 24 cm)
Classification
Prints|Ornament & Architecture
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1961
Accession Number
61.658.28
Art Historical Context
This etching, created in 1756 by Giovanni Battista Brustolon after a design associated with Pellegrino Tibaldi, captures an elaborate fireplace intended as both functional architecture and decorative ornament. Brustolon, an accomplished 18th-century Venetian printmaker, worked in the medium of etching to translate architectural ideas into widely reproducible images. Tibaldi, active in the preceding century as a Mannerist painter and architect, supplied the inventive composition that Brustolon rendered with fine linear detail. Such ornamental prints played a vital role in disseminating archite...
About the Artist
Giovanni Battista Brustolon|Pellegrino Tibaldi · 1712–1796
Giovanni Battista Brustolon (1712–1796) was an Italian printmaker from Belluno who became one of the most accomplished reproductive engravers of 18th-century Venice. Born in 1712, Brustolon specialized in a sophisticated combination of etching and engraving techniques that allowed him to create prints of exceptional tonal richness and detail. Employed by Venice's leading publishers, he dedicated m...