Scene with Four Figures of Monks Discoursing

Scene with Four Figures of Monks Discoursing

Paolo Gerolamo Piola

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This drawing is similar to several by Piola carried out in brown and white on blue-gray paper, all with the artist's initials identically placed in the upper left corner (for example, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv. no. 26083; and Uffizi, Florence, inv. no. 6861). The other drawings are on much wider sheets, however, and each consists of several thematically related vignettes. It is likely that the Four Figures of Monks Discoursing originally belonged to such a composite sketch which was later cut into smaller pieces; it may once have been joined with a similar small sheet of monks in conversation by Piola that is now in the Louvre (inv. no. RF 41 188). Paolo Gerolamo Piola not infrequently monogrammed his own drawings; the letters P. G. P, in the same hand, appear on a Bacchanal in the Uffizi, on a Preaching of the Baptist sold in London (Sotheby's, November 25, 1970, no. 13), and on a Pastoral Subject that was on the London market in 1968 (repr. Old Master Drawings. Yvonne Tan Bunzl, London, 1968, no. 47, pl. 8).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Scene with Four Figures of Monks DiscoursingScene with Four Figures of Monks DiscoursingScene with Four Figures of Monks DiscoursingScene with Four Figures of Monks DiscoursingScene with Four Figures of Monks Discoursing

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.