Studies for Four Figures (recto); Composition Sketches for Groupings of Figures on Clouds (verso)

Jacopo Palma the Younger

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This expressive sheet by Jacopo Palma the Younger, a younger contemporary of Tintoretto in Venice, includes, at upper right, a powerful study for Christ the Redeemer and, at lower left, three figures wrestling. The latter group was drawn after a replica of Michelangelo’s (1475–1564) lost model for a statue of Samson and two Philistines, which had been intended as a pendant to the master’s great marble David (1501–4) on the Piazza della Signoria, in Florence, but was never executed. Palma’s sketchy, bold brushwork and use of white highlights are hallmarks of Venetian draftsmanship from this period.

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