Standard Bearer and Drummer

Sebald Beham

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

As the inscription along the right indicates, Beham created this print as a memorial to the Peasants' War that had occurred nineteen years earlier, a series of violent revolts in which 100,000 peasants were killed. While the Beham brothers often depicted peasants in a satirical way, these two, identified as "Farmer Concz" and "Klos Swineherd," are quite finely rendered.

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