Seated Figure: Study for “A Vision of Antiquity”

Seated Figure: Study for “A Vision of Antiquity”

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The flattening and simplification of form in this drawing is in keeping with the aesthetic Puvis developed for his classicizing murals in the 1880s. This contemplative female figure appears draped in "A Vision of Antiquity" (1885), one of four murals the artist completed for the staircase of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in his hometown of Lyon. Puvis maintained this figure’s psychological and physical isolation even as he transferred her into the context of the painting, where she is surrounded by others. The same sense of detachment can be seen in another version of the composition,"The Shepherd’s Song" (06.177), an adaptation of the Lyon mural on view in Gallery 800.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.