Study of Drapery

Pierre Paul Prud'hon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This detailed drapery study is one of several drawings Prud’hon made for his painting of Andromache and Astyanax (1813–17, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). The painting, which was not completed in his lifetime, depicts a scene from Racine’s play, in which Andromache rejects Pyrrhus, whose father, Achilles, had killed her husband Hector. This sheet was a study for the lower hem of Andromache’s gown as it falls over the side of a chair, a detail he made changes to as he worked on the canvas. The delicate stumping of the black and white chalk endows the drawing with a velvety yet radiant quality. Prud’hon’s delicate draftsmanship captures the weave and the fringes of the drapery—elements that were altered in the final painting.

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