The Baptism of Christ

Jan Muller

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this somber engraving, Christ is seated on a block of stone, surrounded by angels. He wears a long, tasseled robe, holds a small branch in his hands as if it were a scepter and has thorny branches circling his head as if they were a crown. The narrative of Christ wearing a crown of thorns is recounted in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John and when he is tortured and mocked by his jailers just prior to the Crucifixion. Jan Muller was one of the most sought-after Mannerist printmakers, engraving the compositions of the leading artists of the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth- centuries. Here in a relatively rare composition after his own designs, he removes the event from the story of the Passion and sets it in heaven, turning the image into an object of veneration and devotion. He places it within an arched frame, similar to that in The Baptism of Christ (51.501.6338) and The Virgin with the Child Blessing (2014.662), though less elaborate, so that the print functions almost like a small altar.

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