The Virgin with the Child Blessing

Jan Muller

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Virgin with the Child Blessing is an unfinished engraving, a working proof that Jan Muller retouched in pen and brown ink, revising the composition. He made adjustments to the Virgin’s drapery, reinforcing the creases and deepening the shadows, redrew the outline of her left shoulder, making it appear higher, and added to the radiant lines of the Mary’s and Christ’s halos. The figures are in half length, the Virgin holding the Christ Child firmly in her arms, while he raises his right hand to the viewer in the traditional gesture of blessing. In the finished composition, Muller made the changes indicated in pen and ink on this proof and also included an illusionistic frame and a formal inscription below, emphasizing the devotional nature of the composition. This is not a scene taken from the Bible but an image intended to inspire reverence and prayer. Muller printed an extraordinary number of working proofs during his lifetime. He is the first artist to have done so and more than 170 proofs of his 92 or 93 engravings still exist today.

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