Crito

Jacques Louis David

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This highly finished drawing is a study for David's Death of Socrates (31.45), which hangs in the Metropolitan's European Paintings Galleries. The painting depicts the philosopher in prison in 399 BC. Sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens, he pauses to address his followers before drinking the hemlock. This sheet is a study for the pose and drapery of Crito, a wealthy Athenian disciple who, in the painting, sits by Socrates' side and beseeches him not to drink the poison. The grid drawn in black chalk, known as squaring, would have assisted the artist in transferring the design from paper to canvas. Other studies for the painting were acquired by the museum in 2013 (2013.59) and 2015 (2015.149). (Perrin Stein, July 2017)

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