The Nativity with Angels

Bartolomeo Biscaino

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is one of Biscaino’s most ambitious etchings. Its composition was inspired by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione’s 1645 painting of the Nativity in the church of Saint Luca in Genoa. Biscaino worked in Genoa and his later prints show the influence of Castiglione. His etching style, however, is more restrained; the artist excelled at modeling forms to convey subtle variations of light and dark. During his short life (he died of the plague at twenty-eight), he is known to have made around forty etchings.

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