La Citella Romana (Maiden)

Pietro Bertelli

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

These engravings illustrating the costumes of Roman women from different stations of life recall the more ambitious series by Cesare Vecellio and Giacomo Franco devoted to Venetian customs and modes of attire. Similar to those examples, these prints were likely created as book illustrations, though the enterprising Bertelli was known to reuse his inventions in a number of different contexts and formats. Courtesans were essentially cultivated prostitutes. The presence of one of them (plate 6) among the cast of otherwise "honest" women reflects the reality that courtesans were a staple in sixteenth-century society, their intractable presence either rued or tolerated depending on the prevailing moral and religious climate of the day. It is interesting that Bertelli's courtesan, like those of Franco, Vecellio, and Giulio Romano, wears a strand of pearls. Pearls were particularly associated with courtesans, as legal documents of the period amply attest, and were frequently given to courtesans and prostitutes by their clients and patrons as payment for "carnal commerce."

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