Dead Christ Lamented by an Angel

Dead Christ Lamented by an Angel

Jan Muller

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jan Muller was one of the most sought-after Mannerist printmakes. engraving the compositions of the leading artists of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Dead Christ Lamented by an Angel is Muller’s only print based directly on a design by an Italian artist. The drawing for the print by Jacopo Ligozzi, a prolific artist working for the Medici in Florence, is in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg (inv. no. 21236). It is in the same direction as the print, and it has been suggested that it was sent to Muller in Amsterdam to be engraved by him there. The print is one of only a handful of night scenes that Muller made in the mid- to late 1590s and early 1600s. They include the Last Supper after Gillis Coignet (2018.839.109), The Raising of Lazarus after Abraham Bloemart (49.95.578) and two original designs by Muller, Belshazzar’s Feast (51.501.6341) and the Adoration of the Magi (51.501.6340 and 67.810.2). In contrast to the virtuosic vocabulary he perfected for his prints after the Dutch Mannerists and artists from the court of Rudolf II in Prague, here Muller consciously imitates the delicate pen lines of Ligozzi’s drawing, to create the careful balance of light and shadow.

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.