Saint Luke Painting the Virgin

Dirck Vellert

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vellert made this engraving of Saint Luke on July 28, 1526, the year he was elected to his second term as dean of the Guild of Saint Luke, the artists' guild, in Antwerp. He may have made the print to distribute to the guild's members in honor of his position. Vellert included many naturalistic details: an open book next to a knitting basket in the center, the odd combination of an apple resting on a book balanced on top of a jar in the lower left corner. While the entire scene occupies an elaborate High Renaissance architectural setting filled with classically derived ornamentation, the figure of the Virgin surrounded by a mass of animated crumpled drapery is rather Gothic in character.

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