Melancholia

Henri Simon Thomassin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A detailed and tightly executed red chalk copy after Domenico Fetti’s painting, La Melancholie, ca.1618, acquired in 1685 by Louis XIV and today in the musée du Louvre, Paris (Inv. 281). The drawing was presumably used by Thomassin as the model for his print (in reverse direction) for the Recueil d’estampes d’après les plus beaux tableaux [ . . . ] qui sont en France dans le Cabinet du Roi [ . . . ] & dans d’autres cabinets, Paris, 1763, vol.II, pl. CL.

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