Nude Male Figure with a Sword

Nude Male Figure with a Sword

Alexandre Cabanel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The drawing is a study for one of the Muslims in the Captivity of St. Louis in Palestine, one of four scenes from the Life of St. Louis, painted by Cabanel in 1878 in the Panthéon, Paris.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Nude Male Figure with a SwordNude Male Figure with a SwordNude Male Figure with a SwordNude Male Figure with a SwordNude Male Figure with a Sword

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.