Landscape with Tobias and the Angel

Felix Meyer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Book of Tobit, a Jewish work from the 3rd or early 2nd century b.c., does not offer any descriptive details about the Tigris River landscape in which Tobias journeys and finds the fish that will cure his father’s blindness. Nevertheless, Meyer set the scene within lush woods, portraying Tobias and his angelic companion as tiny figures within the verdant landscape.

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