Artwork story
About Design for a Plate with Galatea on a Shell Flanked by Trumpeters in a Medallion Bordered by Sea Monsters
The artist and artwork
Adriaen Collaert engraved this Design for a Plate with Galatea around 1600, and Philips Galle published it. The nearly square sheet proposes a circular ornamental plate: it is a paper design, not the finished metal vessel. In the center, the nude sea nymph Galatea balances on a shell, holds a branch, and receives a crown from two flying putti while mermen rise from the water to sound trumpets. Fine hatching differentiates flesh, shell, sky, and water.
The world around it
The sheet came from Antwerp's late-Renaissance network of family workshops, publishers, and luxury crafts. Collaert had engraved a 1582 series of sea-monster pendant designs after his father, Jan Collaert I; Philips Galle published that edition too. The Met explains that ornament prints served as patterns for artisans catering to a merchant class, allowing motifs to travel across Europe and between media. Classical mythology, putti, and monsters could be recombined for jewelry, vessels, furniture, or textiles. This plate design joins an imaginative seascape to a portable proposition for manufacture.
A detail to notice
Plate 4 completes a four-print series of marine mythologies. Galatea is crowned like the center of a triumph, yet the surrounding creatures are larger and stranger than her court. A giant lobster descends at right; fish, rays, shells, human-fish hybrids, and gaping monsters circle the rim while putti ride, shoot, or tumble among them. Changing directions make the border flow like a current. A teardrop edge suggests a finished dish, and crosshatched darkness makes it float. The lower inscription divides responsibility: `Adrianus Collaert fecit` names Collaert as maker, while `Phls Galle excudit` identifies Galle as publisher. The Met identifies a design and does not identify a completed plate made from it. The surviving object is a transferable idea waiting for another artisan and material.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is print ornament & architecture made in Engraving and held in the Drawings and Prints department.
Recorded dimensions include Sheet: 6 5/8 × 6 9/16 in. (16.8 × 16.6 cm).
Subject terms include Galatea, Mythical Creatures, Monsters, and Fish. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Rogers Fund, 1917.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-23.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
See the products currently available with this artwork. Product choices appear only when the exact item is published, in stock, and available to purchase.
