Plan of Building and Garden
Medium
albums (bound) & books
Classification
albums (bound) & books
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Purchased for the Museum by the Advisory Council
Accession Number
1921-6-286-3
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Research in Progress
Art Historical Context
This "Plan of Building and Garden," dated 1770, comes from the hand of François de Cuvilliés the Elder, a Belgian-born architect and designer (1695–1768) who spent most of his career in Germany. A leading figure of the Rococo movement, Cuvilliés excelled at creating light, ornate, and highly decorative designs that fused architecture with landscape in an elegant, almost theatrical way. Bound into an album or book of plates, the work functions as both a practical architectural drawing and a presentation piece. Such albums allowed architects to share intricate layouts of buildings and gardens w...