Mr. Dimond and Miss Wallis in the Characters of Romeo and Juliet

Francesco Bartolozzi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The eighteenth-century actors William Wyatt Dimond and Jane Tryphosa Wallis appear here as Romeo and Juliet, outside the tomb of the Capulets, where the action of Shakespeare's play will tragically conclude. After the two marry secretly, Romeo will kill Mercutio, be banished, and Juliet forced by her parents to accept the hand of Paris. To avoid that course, she will take a drug to simulate death, and be entombed. When Romeo returns to mourn his bride, he encounters Paris, kills him, then take poison in despair. Finally, Juliet awakes and stabs herself, a sad denouement that the mourning putto seen here at upper right anticipates.

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