The Kaunitz Sisters (Leopoldine, Caroline, and Ferdinandine)

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this rare group portrait, Ingres presents the three daughters of Austria’s ambassador to Rome, Prince Wenzel von Kaunitz-Rietberg. The young women, portrayed at ages thirteen to seventeen, cluster gracefully around the piano. The setting is likely the family music room, where the Kaunitzes often hosted private concerts. Indeed, it may have been Ingres’s passion for music that first won him an invitation to the Kaunitz residence. In this drawing, the artist—already at the height of his powers as a graphic portraitist—delicately described the sisters’ faces, framed in curls and lacy collars. Such details evoke the discreet luxury of Empire fashion and the privileged, cultured world to which these sisters belonged.

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