Pity

William Blake

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This work was inspired by lines from Macbeth (act 1, scene 7), in which the title character imagines the aftermath of his intended murder of Duncan, the king: "And pity, like a naked new-born babe,Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, hors’d Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye" Here, Shakespeare’s similes are embodied to create a dynamic interplay where a baby springs from his mother towards an angel mounted on a blind steed. The artist inventively mixed relief etching with colors printed from millboard to produce this image, then used ink and watercolor to define details. Blake called prints like this one "frescoes" and considered them part of a greater narrative sequence.

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