Young Hunter with His Dogs in a Landscape

Giovanni Francesco Castiglione

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The graphic oeuvre of the elusive Francesco Castiglione, son and loyal assistant of Giovanni Benedetto (1609-1664), can be based largely on the name annotated at the bottom of the sheet by a late-eighteenth-century collector known as the "Reliable Venetian Hand" for the accuracy of his attributions. As a painter, Francesco imitated his father but used a lighter, more saturated palette of colors. As a draftsman, the son preferred a fine pen outline with 'zigzag' strokes for shading and the delicate translucency of watercolor to the father's bold use of the brush and dense application of oil paint on paper. The subject matter of Francesco's two drawings in the Museum’s collection reflects the lasting influence of Dutch and Flemish animal paintings, drawings, and prints in Liguria. The position of the lion in the grouping of animals and birds in the Museum’s "Young Hunter" (inv. 08.227.24) and in the "Congress of Animals" (inv. 08.227.25) may allude to its role as the king of the beasts, based on Aesop's fables.

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