Standing Youth with Hands Behind His Back, and a Seated Youth Reading (recto); Two Studies of Hands (verso)

Standing Youth with Hands Behind His Back, and a Seated Youth Reading (recto); Two Studies of Hands (verso)

Filippino Lippi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This sheet of figure studies illustrates Filippino Lippi’s virtuosity as a draftsman. His handling of the challenging technique of metalpoint is precise and descriptive. The lean, muscular male nude at left was conceived as preparatory study for either a Saint Sebastian or for Christ in a Flagellation scene. The study at right of a seated young man reading a book is probably of a workshop assistant posing as a model. The two faded studies of hands on the verso are of weaker execution than the figures on the recto. Extremely rare in Filippino's oeuvre for their large scale, they are in a style that dates no later than his Lucchese period, 1482–83, as exemplified by his Magrini altarpiece in Lucca. (Carmen C. Bambach, 1997, revised 2014)

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Standing Youth with Hands Behind His Back, and a Seated Youth Reading (recto); Two Studies of Hands (verso)Standing Youth with Hands Behind His Back, and a Seated Youth Reading (recto); Two Studies of Hands (verso)Standing Youth with Hands Behind His Back, and a Seated Youth Reading (recto); Two Studies of Hands (verso)Standing Youth with Hands Behind His Back, and a Seated Youth Reading (recto); Two Studies of Hands (verso)Standing Youth with Hands Behind His Back, and a Seated Youth Reading (recto); Two Studies of Hands (verso)

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.