Bust-Length Study of a Bearded Man with Cap in Three-Quarter View

Jacopo Bassano (Jacopo da Ponte)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jacopo Bassano was among the most innovative painters at the end of the sixteenth century. This intimate portraitlike study in color is a textbook example of Bassano's celebrated naturalism and dazzlingly economic pastel technique. This characteristic drawing, depicting a frequent head type in his canvases, was preparatory for an onlooker on the right in the Miracle of Saint Peter Curing the Cripple (private collection), a connection that had been unnoticed prior to its acquisition by the Museum. Similar head types turn up in the altarpiece of the Glory of Paradise, painted by Jacopo around 1580 for the Church of the Capuchins in Bassano (Museo Civico, Bassano del Grappa).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art