Oeuvres de Jean Racine

Jean Racine

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is the first volume of Didot's three-volume The Works of Racine. It inaugurated the third part of his suite of luxury volumes known as the "Louvre editions." Along with the first installment in the project, The Works of Virgil (1798), it features full-page illustrations instead of headpieces. The illustrations were designed by six painters and two sculptors, and engraved by a host of printmakers. Each play was illustrated wholly by one artist, so that a continuity of style and interpretation was established within each unit of the book. This consistency was not extended to the printmakers, however, which perhaps resulted in more variation than Didot had intended for the images.

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