The Nativity

Bartolomé Estebán Murillo

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

One of the best known of all Spanish artists, Murillo spent most of his life in Seville, where he established an important drawing school. Many sheets from his hand have survived. This drawing is typical of the finished compositions he made late in his career. It is carefully signed in the lower left, and the letters "fe" after his surname are an abbreviation of the Latin fecit, or "made by." Many of Murillo’s drawings were preparatory sketches for paintings. However, given his fame and his role as a teacher, it is possible that he made this drawing as an independent work, perhaps to be sold to a collector.

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