Study for one of the 'Chevaux de Marly'

Study for one of the 'Chevaux de Marly'

Guillaume Coustou the Elder

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This study is related to the Chevaux de Marly (Horses of Marly), one of the most famous large-scale marble sculptures of the period, commissioned by the king in 1739. The statues were moved inside the Louvre in 1985 and replaced with the cement copies that now flank the entrance to the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. Surviving correspondence between French officials details how two drawings by Coustou with profiles of the blocks were sent to Rome in 1740 to aid in the purchase of appropriate pieces of Carrara marble. This sheet, more of a diagram than a premire pensée, may have been one of those drawings.It is also possible that the drawing is connected to the installation or movement of the statue.

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.