Wilton Album, folio 10a: Priapus and Lotis

Wilton Album, folio 10a: Priapus and Lotis

Anonymous, Italian, 16th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Priapus, the ithyphallic god of gardens and fertility and the incarnation of unbridled carnal lust, was a favorite character in the erotic poetry of antiquity and the Renaissance. Long believed to represent Apollo and Daphne, this print instead illustrates a scene from the story of Priapus and Lotis narrated in Ovid's Fasti (elegiac verses commemorating the rustic rituals and celebrations of the ancient Roman calendar) in which the fleeing nymph is transformed into a tree to avoid the rapacious god's advances. An act of censorship has removed, or, more accurately, obscured beneath an improbably swirling drapery, Priapus's enormous, offending phallus. This etching reproduces the composition of a damaged drawing attributed to Parmigianino (Albertina, Vienna) and is possibly the work of his Parmese follower Jacopo Bertoia.


Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Wilton Album, folio 10a: Priapus and LotisWilton Album, folio 10a: Priapus and LotisWilton Album, folio 10a: Priapus and LotisWilton Album, folio 10a: Priapus and LotisWilton Album, folio 10a: Priapus and Lotis

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.