Study for the Decoration of a Vault

Carlo Alberto Baratta

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Baratta’s work represents a last flowering of the exuberant Genoese Baroque style toward the end of the eighteenth century. His steeply foreshortened figures grouped airily within framing architectural elements follow an earlier tradition of illusionistic fresco painting in Genoa. This carefully constructed ceiling design has been connected to Baratta’s fresco in the vault of the chapel of Saint Anne in the now-destroyed church of Santa Maria della Pace, in Genoa, which depicted Saint Anne in a glory of angels. The presence of King David, at lower right with his crown and harp, conflicts with written descriptions of the chapel’s decoration, so the identification remains speculative.

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