Study of Thirteen Heads

Jean Jacques de Boissieu

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Boissieu's graphic oeuvre includes several sketch plates such as this one, where an etching needle was used to draw independent sketches directly onto a prepared copper plate. A format originally associated with the learning process and an artist's initial forays into the medium, the sketch plate became, in the hands of Rembrandt and his eighteenth-century emulators, a vehicle for virtuosity. Here, Boissieu covered the plate with sketches, mostly of old men, juxtaposing heads drawn to different scales and with different degrees of finish.

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