Italian Landscape (recto); Rocks and foliage (verso)

Camille Corot

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The spare linearity of this landscape is enlivened by the density of the rocky crevice and flowing cascade at center. In subject, style, and scale, the drawing relates to others the artist made near Papigno about sixty miles north of Rome around 1826–27. Corot spent three years in Italy (1825‒1827) and produced over two hundred drawings of the region around the Italian capital.

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