Head of a Bearded Man Looking to Upper Left (Saint Ambrose)

Head of a Bearded Man Looking to Upper Left (Saint Ambrose)

Carlo Maratti

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Study for the head of Saint Ambrose in an altarpiece representing the ‘Virgin with Saints Francis of Sales, Nicholas of Myra, and Ambrose’, painted by Maratti during a visit to the Marches in 1672 and intended for the high altar of the church of Saint Nicola in Ancona. The altarpiece is now in the Pinacoteca Comunale, Ancona (Marchini 1960, p. 84, repr.) The sheet is pasted down on an old mat which has been lined in red ink and annotated in the same red ink "Carlo Maratti." This mat is presumably of the Spencer Collection and by the same mounter as the mat on the inv. no 61.131.1, a drawing by Stefano della Bella, also from the Spencer Collection.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Head of a Bearded Man Looking to Upper Left (Saint Ambrose)Head of a Bearded Man Looking to Upper Left (Saint Ambrose)Head of a Bearded Man Looking to Upper Left (Saint Ambrose)Head of a Bearded Man Looking to Upper Left (Saint Ambrose)Head of a Bearded Man Looking to Upper Left (Saint Ambrose)

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.