The Constancy of Coriolanus

Jean François Janinet

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean-Guillaume Moitte and Jean-François Janinet began collaborating around 1787, and this composition is typical of their work from the end of the eighteenth century. It illustrates a scene from the life of Caius Marcius Coriolanus, a Roman soldier and statesman from the fifth century B.C. whose biography appeared in Plutarch's Lives of the Notable Greeks and Romans (96-98 A.D.) and was the subject of William Shakespeare's last tragedy, Coriolanus (1608). A later version of the print bears an inscription explicating the scene, which shows Coriolanus, having been condemned to exile, bidding farewell to his wife, mother, and children.

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