Flying Figure Holding a Crown, Reclining River God

Flying Figure Holding a Crown, Reclining River God

Jacques Louis David

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

As a student at the French Academy, David filled sketchbooks with drawings after antique as well as Baroque art, including this sketch of figures from Pietro da Cortona's fresco, The Assumption of the Virgin, in the apse of the Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella in Rome. In this drawing, one of two that he made after this fresco, David has modified the relative placement of the two figures as they appear in Cortona's ceiling to conform to the format of his sheet.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Flying Figure Holding a Crown, Reclining River GodFlying Figure Holding a Crown, Reclining River GodFlying Figure Holding a Crown, Reclining River GodFlying Figure Holding a Crown, Reclining River GodFlying Figure Holding a Crown, Reclining River God

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.