Christ and the woman of Samaria at the well, from the series of 112 prints of the sacred history, after the painting by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta
Pietro Monaco
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The engraving was based on a painting then in the Avogadro collection in Brescia. From the series of 112 prints of the sacred history, after paintings by various artists.
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.