The Poet Virgil in a Basket

The Poet Virgil in a Basket

Lucas van Leyden

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

According to medieval legend, Virgil fell in love with the Roman emperor's daughter. One night she promised to raise him to her bedroom in a basket but left him dangling halfway to be mocked by passersby the following day. The tale of the poet Virgil in a basket belongs to a popular fifteenth- and sixteenth-century theme, the power of women. Lucas produced two series of woodcuts and several engravings on this theme, illustrating women's ability to make fools of even the wisest of men. In a characteristic narrative strategy of the artist, Lucas placed the main subject in the background, inviting the viewer to join the onlookers in the foreground as they discuss the event. This print is one of the artist's most delicately engraved and spatially elaborate works, with a clear distinction between foreground, middle ground, and background. Lucas was famed for his ability to create atmospheric perspective, achieved by lessening pressure on the burin so that the lines become increasingly fine and shallow the further from the foreground they are meant to be.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Poet Virgil in a BasketThe Poet Virgil in a BasketThe Poet Virgil in a BasketThe Poet Virgil in a BasketThe Poet Virgil in a Basket

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.